Reading Time: 135 Minutes

Title: The Last Strawberry You’ll Ever Eat
Author: SASundance
Fandom: Stargate SG1
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Kid!fic, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Gen
Content Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Major Character Death. Alien Abduction; Temporary minor character death; Grief, and loss of a child through gun violence; discussions of canonical elements of slavery, genocide and rape: discussions canonical element of ethical issues of child autonomy and abuse; mild character bashing
Author Note: British spelling and grammar. Big shoutout to my Beta, who was operating under huge impediments. TWBMW <3
Beta: Aussiefan70
Word Count: 113,104
Summary: Dr Janet Fraiser, CMO of Stargate Command, greatly respects her superior officers, General George Hammond and Colonel Jack O’Neill. But they’re all facing a huge challenge over which option to take to repair the dying Reetou Charlie’s poorly cloned body. Will she have to overrule the two highest-ranked officers on the base?
Artist: CoCo
Artist Appreciation: Thanks so much Coco. Loved your images that have brought the story to life.

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Chapter 5: Fathers and Sons

“A father’s love is like your shadow, though he is dead or alive, he will live with your shadow” ~ P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar

Jack looked around his cabin with a sense of melancholy. His first son had loved coming here with him. Sara and her dad, Mike Wade, often came too, and they would fish, not in his pond, though, because while it had fish, it was not intended for catching fish. Then they would cook them over an open fire when it was warm enough, and they’d go hiking every day and make s’mores at night. Sara would complain that it was unhealthy, and s’mores were supposed to be an occasional treat, but Jack knew she was pulling Charlie’s leg. The truth was she loved the sugar-filled crap as much as her son had and it was de rigueur for the O’Neill family to gorge themselves on the chocolate and marshmallow, sandwiched between two graham crackers then toasted over the open fire whenever they went to the cabin that Jack’s grandfather built, sixty odd years ago.

As he smiled, remembering Sara pigging out on the marshmallow treats, he questioned for the hundredth time if he should have informed her about Charlie – this current Charlie. As a clone of their dead son, she was as much his parent as Jack was, but informing her was complicated, and that understated the situation. the first major problem was that this cloned child of their dead son was going to die, and not in the we are all dying day-by-day sense of mortality either. The tragic reality was that Reetou Charlie had been born into an extremely imperfect body, and at best, he had a couple of weeks to live. Was it fair to put her through the heartbreak of loving him for such a short time, knowing the pain she would inevitably face when he died in a matter of days? And he did not question for a second that Sara would love him with every fibre of her being.

Ordinarily, Jack could hide behind the highly classified nature of Charlie’s cloning by an alien race to rationalise why she would never learn about his existence. The SGC was super top secret in the literal ‘if I told you, I’d have to kill you’ sense, but that obstacle didn’t apply to her. Having already run into an alien entity who shapeshifted from her ex-husband into her dead son necessitated her being read into not only the existence of alien life forms. She knew about the Stargate, and the US military operating a secret exploration of the galaxy via stable generated wormholes, explaining why her dead child turned up in the first year of the program. Of course, the NID insisted that after she’d seen the alien impersonating Jack turn into energy as it was dying and unintentionally harmed after trying to help him, she had to sign a massive Non-Disclosure Agreement, agreeing not to reveal anything about the Stargate. With dire consequences if she talked to anyone.

Having been married to a Black Ops Special Forces operative, she had been accustomed to the need for discretion and what happened if you weren’t. So, it wouldn’t be a security issue to inform her about their clone’s son – that would be the easy part. Getting permission to bring her dad into the secret would have been much harder since he was already knocked back from being told about the stargate even after interacting with the crystalline alien who had impersonated Jack, but that was then, and this was now. Jack had a lot of influence in Washington, particularly since SG-1 and Bra’tac saved the planet when Apophis brought two Goa’uld motherships full of Jaffa and weapons to wipe out Earth’s inhabitants.

How Mike would have handled the news was another matter entirely. He would come around eventually, but Jack didn’t want Charlie’s few precious days wasted in dealing with his grandfather’s anger, denial about alien life forms and the whole secret government conspiracy; he would undoubtedly spout off. Mike had never been a fan of his daughter marrying someone in the military, especially after he realised Jack was Special Forces. Of course, if, like Sara, he’d seen the crystal alien shapeshifted into Charlie’s form in a misguided attempt to heal Jack’s injuries, not understanding the injury it detected was grief for his son and not something it could fix, Mike might have been more ready to accept the truth. But, maybe, even then, he would reject what he saw with his own eyes or label it a conspiracy.

Mike would be right in one sense; there was a conspiracy to keep the truth from the world, but that was a whole other ball of wax. It was also a subject well beyond Jack’s wheelhouse but even if you played devil’s advocate and argue that most of the worlds they encountered, even so-called primitive ones such as the Land of the Light knew that the galaxy was populated with many other races and that the Stargate could be used to travel to these worlds, so why didn’t the people on Earth know. The counterargument was that these races had always known they weren’t alone in the universe and that there were good and bad races out there that could threaten their existence. They knew and accepted it, not knowing any different.

It had been the same on Earth during the Egyptian civilisation when the Goa’uld had ruled the Earth, enslaved humans and forced people to worship them as Gods. Following the final and successful uprising after some failed attempts to overthrow the Goa’uld System Lords and their armies of Jaffa and legions of worshippers, the people of Earth succeeded in killing or exiling them before they’d buried the gate underground so it couldn’t be used to access the planet. The enemy retreated; the Goa’uld had already harvested many thousands of humans from Earth, seeding them on other worlds as slaves and Goa’uld worshippers. It seemed fair to assume that the System Lords decided the people of Earth were more trouble than they were worth and sought out greener pastures on other planets. According to Danny, the Jaffa had originally hailed from Earth, as had most if not all the humans they’d encountered in their missions so far.

Back on Earth, the truth of what the Goa’uld were (parasitical, cruel dictators) slowly over the many eons after the peasant uprising, became known until Egyptian Pharaohs, believed to be human and stories of space-travelling System Lords were interpreted as myths and legends by simple and superstitious peasants. As humans became more technologically advanced, hubris increased along with it, discounting even the possibility that the people of Earth weren’t alone in the galaxy. This was despite the infinite number of worlds out there that could support life and indeed did support it. However, as the earth’s population grew ever larger, expanding exponentially, along with its arrogance, it became ever more insular; its isolationism and xenophobia ratcheted up as everyone zealously guarded their resources.

To announce to the entire planet’s population the forgotten truth that they had so recently rediscovered a mere three years before, when they went through the Gate for the first time to Abydos and encountered the natives there, was problematic. Jack smothered a grin thinking about the first team reactions, which he led (before SG-1), to that honkin’ big mastidge that roamed the planet. The indigenous creature was a kind of buffalo/horse that the Abydonian people domesticated. Yeah, it was one thing to learn that they weren’t alone in the galaxy and that other humans existed, but if the world discovered the existence of evil, more advanced aliens in spaceships or zipping around the universe via stargates, TPTB argued, it would cause instant panic and rioting.

People would fear not only those from other planets but also hoard what they saw as theirs or as necessary for their survival. Even if those resources belonged to their neighbours over the street or from across the seas. Peace, which was ephemeral at best, would become even more fragile, more elusive. Political and economic stability would inevitably crumble, leaving the Earth ripe for the Goa’uld to try to retake it, or worse, they would wipe out the whole population. It wasn’t hyperbole – they had encountered worlds where they had done exactly that. Unfortunately, Planet Earth wasn’t part of the Protected Planets Treaty which existed between the Asgard and the Goa’uld because it was technologically advanced enough to have defences that the more primitive planets did not. Their technological advancements were probably why Apophis and his son had already tried to destroy Earth, but thankfully had failed, and they’d lost two mother ships and Jaffa.

Being a violent race of parasitic scavengers, Jack shuddered to think what would happen should the slimy snakey-assed Goa’uld ever manage to take over Earth with all her advanced technology, especially their electronic surveillance capabilities. They’d use it against the inhabitants of Earth to spy on them and force them into subservience. It would not be pretty!

He smirked cynically, knowing Daniel and possibly Carter would be gobsmacked at the depth of his analysis of geopolitics, sociology and anthropology, and yet, Special Forces operatives weren’t picked because they were stupid. They were picked because they were intelligent and excelled in intel analysis, especially on the fly. However, in his experience, O’Neill quickly discovered that there were situations where it served to be thought of as not overly bright. That home truth was never more applicable than when he was tasked with leading the disparate individuals on SG-1. Having two certifiable geniuses at his disposal, plus Apophis’ First Prime/Jaffa warrior, while proving to be the reason for their success these eighteen months past, was also a tricky balancing act. Portraying himself as…not stupid exactly, but downplaying his intellectual capabilities helped balance out the team, he smirked inwardly.

Still, he’d wandered far off the beaten track, which was that reading in his former father-in-law on the Stargate and everything it entailed would have been problematic…extremely so. Of course, you could argue that informing Sara of Charlie’s existence and bringing her to Jack’s cabin to meet her son didn’t automatically mean that Wade had to be included too, thereby avoiding the necessity that he be read in on the Stargate. The situation wasn’t mutually inclusive, but Jack felt that after Charlie died, it would be beyond cruel of the government to leave his ex-wife to deal with her grief alone and force her to hide everything from her father.

Especially since he already knew that it wasn’t just the grief of losing this Charlie that would devastate him (and Sara), it would bring up all of the pain and loss from the death of their first child again. All those well-meaning and utterly ignorant asshats, who tried to help by making trite remarks to him amidst his grief and despair about time healing all wounds, was bullshit. Most of them knew sweet fuck all about the loss of a child. Deep down in the depths of his soul, Jack knew he would never get over it!

He had been shocked at how much it still hurt him when the crystalline alien had manifested as his dead son, bringing all the pain and guilt crashing down on him once more. Ironically, the crystalline alien wanted to heal him, not realising that his grief wasn’t a physical ailment, or maybe it was! But it was also something that he knew he would never “get over’ and with this second son’s death to be endured, Jack O’Neill knew he would never recover from this one either.

He watched Charlie sleeping, exhausted after their trip to the cabin and brief but exciting exploration of the interior and exterior environment. This included a quick ride on the quad bike Carter had thoughtfully organised, which was waiting there for them upon their arrival. After riding down to the big lake and back, he needed to rest, immediately crashing when his head hit the pillow, breaking Jack’s heart that he had so little stamina. With too much time on his hands and too little to keep his mind and body busy, he’d begun second-guessing himself over whether he had the right to keep this from Sara.

Resolutely, he rose and entered the small but well-equipped kitchen, deciding to get a small snack prepared for when his son woke up. Janet had highlighted the importance of giving Charlie numerous small meals throughout the day rather than three large meals, reminding him that Charlie’s organs weren’t up to digesting normal-sized meals. There was also the issue of trying to tempt his appetite with food entirely foreign to him, having eaten a diet that consisted of small insects and vegetation on Retalia. Cassie had been a real treasure when getting Charlie to eat. She had also, through circumstances, been forced to depend on the adults at the SGC, having lost every living person on her home planet and trying to cope with how alien it all was, even the food. That said, the people of Hanka were human, unlike the Reetou, so even though the food on Earth was strange and unfamiliar, they didn’t eat live insects.

It was Cassandra who’d persuaded Charlie to try his first bites of human food. Ironically, she coaxed him into trying the first Earth food she ate, hot dog sausages sans condiments and buns, slicing them up into small discs and eating to keep him company, just as Carter had done with her when she first arrived. Of course, Janet had frowned when he started to eat the hot dogs at every meal, mumbling about how full of nitrates, salt and other very nasty chemicals they were, and totally inappropriate for a sick little boy. But Jack took the view that at least he started eating. They soon discovered he preferred his food in bite-sized pieces so he could pick them up and eat with his fingers, and Jack had no problem with that. He didn’t care if he ate with his fingers, nor did he see the sense in making his kid eat healthy food when he only had days to live.

If the little boy would eat mini fish sticks, chicken nuggets and tater tots, that was cool with him. Besides, having gone through a fussy stage with Charlie when he was three years old, where they despaired at his picky appetite, they were convinced that he would starve himself to death. They soon learnt that he would eat when he got hungry (although at the time, it had seemed interminable, but the more they tried to make him eat, the more he dug his heels in and refused. Both his parents were strong-willed individuals, and their son seemed to have inherited a double helping from both sets of their DNA. In hindsight, it was that stubbornness that had contributed to his death, desperate to play with Jack’s handgun, no matter if it was strictly forbidden.

Just as he finished heating a couple of mini fish sticks and several tater tots, his son started to stir. Quickly, he added a handful of seaweed crackers that were Cassie’s favourites. After he’d tried them suspiciously, Charlie decided they weren’t ‘totally’ disgusting, which Janet’s adopted daughter informed Jack meant he liked them…a lot. O’Neill grabbed a nutritional supplement in a Tetra pack that looked like a juice box but was a dietetically formulated liquid meal replacement that, in Jack’s opinion, tasted foul. Luckily, Charlie had drunk them without complaint, so he didn’t feel as guilty about the snack he had prepared, even if the Napoleonic Power Monger, aka Dr Janet Fraiser, CMO, would tear him a new one if she were here. Fortunately, she wasn’t, and seriously, Jack was going to chill about what Charlie ate since food wouldn’t heal him, even if he ate a macrobiotic diet.

After Charlie stubbornly insisted that he wanted to get out of bed to eat at the table with Jack, he swiftly assembled a tuna fish sandwich on wholegrain, so they could share a meal, picking at it in a desultory fashion. His appetite had taken a nosedive right after he had made the agonising decision not to send his son off with the Tok’ra so that a symbiote could blend with him and heal him…maybe. As Selmak had pointed out as they were going over the pros and cons, it was not a certainty; more like a strong possibility that a Tok’ra could heal him, but there were no guarantees. Until the Tok’ra symbiote was in his body and could determine precisely how dire his situation was and what was needed to heal him, they couldn’t know for sure if they could save him.

Jack understood that nothing in life was one hundred percent certain, but at that point (prior to learning Charlie was his son), he initially felt like the risk was worth it. Essentially because the boy he’d befriended would still be alive, and that was all that mattered, so he’d pushed aside his doubts about the Tok’ra. After having second thoughts and then listening to Janet’s argument against sending him off with the Tok’ra, plus learning the truth about his origins, he had serious second thoughts regarding the wisdom of the symbiote plan. Most of the time, Jack felt that they were doing the right thing for Charlie because it was expecting too much of him to ask him to host a symbiote. However, it didn’t stop him from feeling like he was signing his son’s death order.

Intellectually, he agreed that asking him to become a host to a Tok’ra and having one inside his head would be too traumatic for Charlie to deal with, considering how fearful he was of Goa’uld and the outward similarities between Tok’ra and the megalomaniac Goa’uld. Had it merely been a temporary measure of blending with a symbiote to heal him and then leaving him again, they could have sedated him during the process, but the Tok’ra were not offering that. Hopping into a host’s body and popping back out after healing was apparently problematic, even dangerous, and Selmak explained they would already be limited in who they asked to blend with him.

Jack knew that they’d made the right call even though it was ripping his heart to shreds. Plus, he remembered when he’d had to explain the two options – go with the Tok’ra or stay on Earth and die. Charlie had become very distressed at the thought of blending with a Tok’ra despite Jack carefully and calmly explaining the differences between them and the Goa’uld.

The lad, whose physical age Jane estimated to be between eight and nine years of age, even though he’d only lived for a fraction of that time, grasped hold of Jack’s BDU shirt in a limpet-like grip. He looked tearily into Jack’s brown eyes and asked, his voice tremulous, making O’Neill feel even worse, “If I go with them, can you come with me, Jack?”

Never had Jack O’Neill hated himself more than he did when he was forced to reply that he couldn’t go with him. The Tok’ra had already vetoed the possibility of him going with them to rear his son, because their location was secret. He also suggested a second option, that the Tok’ra symbiote could come to Earth and be a liaison, just as Jacob did with the Tok’ra, but their High Council wouldn’t go for that one either. He reckoned they had a problem ceding control. As much as they liked to claim they were very different from their evolutionary brethren, it seemed they weren’t comfortable with him having so much influence over a host, even if Charlie was still a small boy AND his son. Selmak had tried to persuade the High Council that it was a reasonable request for Jack to make, given Charlie’s age and background, but it simply wasn’t open for negotiation.

In a way, their emphatic refusal to consider letting Jack remain with his son, despite the extraordinary circumstances, made it somewhat easier to reject the blending outright. Even if they had taken up one of the options, Jack had felt dubious it would have worked – a suspicion that was made stronger when he and Janet brought up the possibility, feeling he should get a say since it was his life. It was patently obvious to him that Charlie was not keen on the idea as he fought hard not to cry, twisting Jack’s shirt even tighter.

“I want to stay here with you, Jack,” the boy begged him pitifully, and it would take someone a whole lot more cold-blooded than O’Neill to refuse his son’s heartfelt pleas.

Still, he explained gravely, his own heart breaking as he spoke, why, when the Tok’ra had first offered, Jack had thought maybe it was a good idea because even if they had tried very hard to heal him, Charlie was very sick. However, Jacob and his Tok’ra symbiote Selmak felt it was possible that if a Tok’ra symbiote blended with him, they could probably fix him. Everyone agreed that without becoming a host to a Tok’ra, he would only live for a short time.

“How long would I live?” he asked with a child’s innate curiosity.

Jack had gulped back his tears, rendered mute at this point in their discussion and looked to Janet to field that wretched question. He was so grateful for her presence.

She had risen to the occasion with a gentleness and gravity, greatly enhanced by her own recent experience gained by parenting Cassandra. “We don’t know exactly, maybe a week or two. I’m so sorry we can’t fix you up, Charlie.”

He regarded her seriously, weighing up her answer carefully before nodding acceptingly. “It’s okay, Janet. Don’t be sad,” he comforted her, and Jack could see how his calm reception of the news that he was dying was much harder for the CMO to deal with than if he’d gotten angry.

Turning to O’Neill, he pleaded, “Please, Jack, can’t I stay here with you?”

Struggling to speak around the big lump in his throat, he managed to say, even though he felt his heart breaking, “Okay, Charlie, if that’s what you really want to do.”

“It will be great,” he beamed at Jack and Janet before realising he was visibly upset. “If you don’t want me, that’s okay. Maybe I can stay here,” he offered, and Jack let out an agonising sob, thankful it was just Janet and no other medical staff in the room.

“Jack wants you to be with him, Charlie. He’s just very sad because you are so sick, and we can’t make you better,” Dr Fraiser explained to the boy gravely, having Jack’s six as he shot her a profound look of thanks as she continued. “He doesn’t want you to die.”

“Oh,” the small boy exclaimed, his face wrinkled in consternation before it cleared as he tugged on Jack’s shirt to get his attention.

“Don’t be sad, it’s okay. Mother explained how I was made and that something went wrong when they were making me. They were in a rush because the Reetou Rebels had begun planning your attrition,” he comforted Jack solemnly, with a maturity well beyond his years.

“That’s why they had to make me older more quickly than they should, so I could talk to you and warn you about the rebels and how the rest of the Reetou don’t want to kill you all,” he told the adults before dropping his bombshell.

“Mother already told me that I wouldn’t grow any more, not like a real boy, because my body was starting to break. That’s why she wanted me to stay here with you,” he explained, looking into Jack’s red-rimmed eyes searchingly.

Jack looked over at Janet, not knowing how to respond to what Charlie had said. She looked equally out of her depth, and he figured, like he was, Fraiser was struggling with her contradictory feelings. On the one hand, being military to their bootstraps, both knew that Earth owed Mother and the Reetou Central Alliance a massive debt for finding a way to warn them of the horrific plot by some of their kind. Being out of phase rendered Reetou invisible to humans, making them extremely vulnerable. Yet the reverse did not seem to apply to the Reetou, who could see them, which endangered not just humans on Earth, but other human populations across the galaxy. It was entirely possible that many humans, including those on Earth, could lose their lives and never see the threat coming for them, nor realise what had killed their people, even with all their forensic capabilities.

On a personal note, though, Jack felt immense anger that the Reetou cloned Charlie for the sole purpose of being a messenger, no matter how critical it was for humankind. He was also furious that they’d botched the job so badly that the kid…that his son would die without having a chance of ever being a real kid. It was inhuman, but then the Reetou weren’t human and likely had very different values from humans.

Or perhaps not, Mother had been equally scathing about the leadership of those in charge over their intention to deceive and rob the Salish of their natural resources, taking advantage of their gullibility and lack of technology. The Powers That Be believed they could take what they wanted without consequences, not realising that Xe’ls and T’akaya’s people were highly evolved beings and could have been powerful allies, but they’d ended up as even more powerful enemies. Just like the Nox, in their rush to gain a tactical advantage over the Goa’uld, they shortsightedly shot themselves in the ass, losing a chance to foster an alliance with one of the most powerful races, while nearly getting themselves killed. Okay, they did die, but fortunately, the Nox had revived SG1.

Perhaps Jack shouldn’t be so quick to judge Mother’s Reetou as callous for using a small boy, even if his life would only be measured in a few short months instead of years. Looking at it dispassionately, most people would say they’d done the right thing, Jack supposed, as he looked around his cabin, his thoughts immersed in fond memories of his first family being here.

But for crying out loud! This was his flesh and blood they were talking about here. His son, whom he was going to have to watch die. There was no way he could be pragmatic about what they had done, and he was damned if he was going to apologise for it.

Remembering that conversation back in the infirmary, he remembered thinking that there was no way his heart could be torn apart any more than it already was, and to continue beating, circulating the lifeblood around his body. Then Charlie had ambushed him with yet another bombshell.

“If I stay with you ‘til I die, do you think maybe I can call you Father instead of Jack?”

And there it was, he’d been wrong! His son had plunged a rapier-sharp dagger straight into his heart. It felt like it would explode, as Janet, after a gasp that expressed her own shock, leapt into the breach.

“Is there any reason why you want to call Jack… Father, Charlie?” she stumbled over her words.

Jack, having a flash of insight, searched the eyes of his second child, seeing the truth within Charlie’s acceptance of his fate, wistfulness at what could have been and his hunger for love, and found himself answering the CMO’s question to spare his son.

“He already did, Doctor. He told us that Mother explained how he was made. She told you I was your father, didn’t she?” he addressed the boy, who was looking perplexed.

“You know?” Charlie looked relieved but still worried at the same time. “She said you didn’t know about me.”

“I do know now,” Jack confirmed. “Not at first…but Dr Fraiser figured it out when she was looking at your blood.”

“Oh,” he replied. “Are you mad?” he asked tentatively.

“No,” Jack assured him quickly, although not completely truthfully. He was furious, but not with the innocent child. Never with his son! “But I am very sad and mad that you are sick.”

So, does that mean I can call you Father?” the small boy asked him hopefully.

“Not Father,” Jack said unthinkingly.

It was too much like Mother and Jack was irrationally angry at the Reetou for stealing his dead son’s DNA and fucking up the cloning process so spectacularly, even though intellectually he knew it had been done with the noblest of intentions and would save many lives. He opened his mouth to explain further, but Charlie, having jumped to the wrong conclusion, looking sorrowful, got in first.

“It’s okay, Jack. I know I’m just a copy of your real son, and I don’t work properly. But I’m glad I can stay with you,” until I die, remained unspoken but still hung heavy between them.

The heartbroken father felt another stab pierce his heart, which was already struggling to function. He swept the boy up into his arms, cradling him gently in a hug as Charlie melted into the embrace and gave a little sob since Jack had told him before, it was okay to cry.

“Charlie, I wasn’t finished. I was going to say that your brother always called me Dad. Well, he called me Dadda when he first learned to talk. Then, when he was a little tyke, he used to call me Daddy, but when he got bigger, he called me Dad, and that’s what I want you to call me too,” he said softly as the frail child began to sob in earnest.

He focused on holding him gently and comforting him, realising that his son hadn’t had a chance to grieve over the death of ‘Mother’ yet. As angry with her as he felt, Jack knew that Charlie’s feelings for her were genuine – he loved her, and he saw her die. For all intents and purposes, he saw her as his mother, and Jack had to honour that relationship, despite his own complicated emotions toward her. Thus, he swore a silent oath to himself not to reveal how he felt about her, ending up simply rocking Charlie, who gradually stopped crying. He sent a silent query to Janet, who looked just as shattered as he felt, asking her to check on the boy’s status.

She shook her head and mouthed, “He’s awake.”

Nodding gratefully, he rearranged their position so he could see Charlie’s face and his boy could see Jack’s as well before speaking gently but with utter conviction. “And Charlie, I need you to listen to me. You aren’t just a copy of your brother. You. Are. A. Real. Person, and I love you too, just like I loved him,” he told the child sincerely.

“As for you not working properly, that’s just not true. You work perfectly, and you did a hugely important job. Without you, a great many people would have died, killed by the Reetou Rebels, but thanks to you, we have a chance to save their lives,” he said, hugging him fiercely but mindful of his failing body.

A large part of Jack questioned how ethical it was to feed into Charlie’s self-image that his sole purpose was to deliver a message and try to show his kid that there were huge consequences for its successful delivery. If Charlie had been going to live for longer than a few days or weeks, then Jack probably wouldn’t have chosen to reinforce that callous narrative that he was created to be a messenger. But there wasn’t enough time to convince him his life was worth so much more than that, so he tried to expand upon what had already been conveyed to him about his reason for existing. Intuitively, he felt it was the right thing to do for this horrible place they found themselves in.

“Do you mean that?” Charlie asked, his voice muffled by Jack’s T-shirt.

“Yeahsureyabetcha I do,” he said, ignoring the bitter truth that he still deeply resented what they had done to his boy.

“And I can stay here on Earth with you and call you…” His breath hitched several times before he collected himself, “…Dad?”

“Absolutely, positively, I mean it Charlie,” Jack assured him, feeling grateful for Janet standing firm in objecting to their dumbass plan to send Charlie to the Tok’ra. It was made with all the best intentions in the world, but even if they had saved his life, it would have been cruelty beyond measure to have sent him away with them.

As Jack held his son, who’d melted into his embrace, he remembered something he had heard or read some years ago, which had really resonated with him, particularly after he lost his first son. A father’s love is like your shadow; though he is dead or alive, he will live with your shadow. He desperately hoped that was still true when, contrary to the natural order, a son died before their father and that maybe it applied to sons too, that both of his Charlies would still live in his shadow. Perhaps the Crystal Alien Charlie had been trying to tell him that too, he realised sadly. He wished that he could have more than shadows, though.

While Charlie ate, gaily chattering away, making plans about what he wanted to do: go for more rides on the quad bike (thank you, Carter), play board games, do more drawing (thanks, Cassie), watch movies and listen to Jack read him stories, Jack once again thought about his former wife. He couldn’t help thinking about how much she would have adored him if she had been given the opportunity. Despite wanting to protect her from the inevitable pain when he died, Jack realised something crucial. He recalled the emotional conversation he and Janet had when Charlie asked if he could call him Father, and he realised that introducing him to his biological mother might not be in Charlie’s best interests either.

It was painfully clear to him that Charlie loved Mother dearly, despite Jack’s resentment of her and what she’d done. He watched the Reetou Rebels kill her, and naturally, he was still grieving for her. If Jack had brought Sara here, she would want to nurture Charlie’s clone…Charlie’s brother, to mother the shit out of him despite not having given birth to him and who could blame her? However, that would be tremendously hard on Charlie emotionally because Jack doubted, he was ready for someone else to try to take Mother’s place.

The fact that she was his biological mother didn’t change the fact that to the small boy, Mother was the one who created him and cared for him all his life. Even if that life was only a few months, he bonded with her, and Jack mustn’t forget that. Bringing Sara here to the cabin might seem to be an obvious thing to do so he could get to know her, but it also ran the very real risk of Charlie thinking he was trying to usurp Mother and say she didn’t matter, which would be extremely cruel and hurtful. Charlie hadn’t asked to be born, but born he was, and ‘Mother’ reared him, and she died protecting Earth and Charlie from the Reetou Rebels. She deserved to be honoured, even if he was pissed at her for making Charlie think he was a broken copy of his dead brother.

Jack would not knowingly hurt his son more than he had already been damaged by the untenable situation. Charlie had paid a terrible price, and he would protect him at all costs, even if that meant Sara never got to know him. Of course, it didn’t mean that when this was all over, Jack O’Neill wouldn’t be plagued with crippling guilt for preventing Sara and Mike from meeting Charlie, nor would he stop second-guessing those decisions even if he knew they were the right ones. Just because it was the right thing to do, it wouldn’t make it any easier to live with – his years in Black Ops had taught him that harsh reality more than once.

 

Chapter 6: Gaze into the Abyss

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

SG-3, Daniel, Teal’c, and the scientists Drs. Coombs and Felgar, who just happened to be SG-1’s biggest fanboys and thrilled to bits at going into the field with half of SG-1, exited the gate on P3R-636. Daniel was impatient to check up on Princess Shyla. He hoped that now, having stopped using the sarcophagus, her mental health had improved too.

He vividly remembered the first time SG-1 encountered her in the forest. It was mere moments after they spotted her that she tried to throw herself off a cliff, depressed because her Prince Charming had failed to appear and sweep her off her feet, as prophesied by her beloved mother. Daniel, on his unrelenting mission to save other people, broke cover on what they believed to be a Goa’uld-controlled planet. Rushing in to save her from flinging herself to her death, he’d ended up quite literally confirming the prophecy.

At least in the princess’s mind.

In her highly disturbed mind Daniel was immediately cast as her saviour cum Prince Charming, and Shyla set out to snare her ‘future husband,’ duly protecting them from her extremely paranoid father and ruler of their world. Protection, which involved forcing them to labour in the naquadah mine for the rest of their lives instead of being summarily executed. Of course, from her perspective, their lack of abject gratitude for her intercession, commuting their punishment to incarceration for the term of their natural life, might have had something to do with the Princess’s failure to disabuse her father, King Pyrus, of his misapprehension that SG-1 had been trying to kill her.

They’d soon discovered that King Pyrus was not a Goa’uld, despite outward appearances and his narcissistic arrogance. He had defeated the minor Goa’uld who ruled their planet and forced Shyla’s people to work in the naquadah mines seven hundred years ago.

Not long after being forced to work in the mine, a failed escape bid by SG-1 had gone horribly wrong, and Daniel was critically injured. Shyla had the guard place him in their sarcophagus, where he was revived. Then, instead of returning him to the mine with the rest of the team, she set out to make him fall in love with her, cajoling him into using the sarcophagus every day, as she and her father did. Daniel slowly began to change as the side effects the Tok’ra had noted gradually took hold.

It never occurred to him, well, not until right now, that Shyla’s suicide attempt that he thwarted wasn’t even a genuine one since she had surely known that the Palace Guards would find her body and use the sarcophagus to revive her. Throwing herself off the cliff was merely a crude attempt at forcing a prophecy to come true, and from her perspective, she succeeded.

Every day, while his teammates slaved away in the mines under appalling conditions (which he was fully aware of since he had briefly been subject to them as well), he fell further under her thrall as she manipulated him by way of the sarcophagus. He became more arrogant, egotistical and disloyal to his team and the SGC, sending back messages to General Hammond that all was well, so they didn’t send any other teams to the planet to check up on them. Had Sha’re been there to witness his metamorphosis after he started using the damn sarcophagus, she would have been utterly scathing at the changes in him, and rightly so.

Daniel felt deeply ashamed that he had let Shyla manipulate him the way she had. He had turned into someone he didn’t recognise; he turned into a monster!

Talk about being a walking, talking cliché, he couldn’t help but think about that famous quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, who’d said, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

Well, Daniel was certainly fighting the Goa’uld, who must surely qualify as monsters. The Abydonians, his wife’s people, had been living under the oppression of the Goa’uld for centuries, probably millennia, and for what they did to Sha’re and her brother Skaara, he hated them with a passion that sometimes scared him. He was fighting desperately to defeat them, and yet he’d succumbed to the corrupt power of their sarcophagus, turning into someone…something he despised. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

Shyla had wanted him to marry her, but up until that point, he had remained faithful to the love of his life. After all, Sha’re was still his wife, and he was as determined to rescue her from the torture she was forced to endure as Amonet’s unwilling host after Apophis’ abduction. In contrast, he had no interest in Shyla other than a desire to help her, as it was apparent that she was one deeply unhappy individual. Regardless of her obvious attraction to him, he was committed to his wife and the vows he made to Sha’re when they were married on Abydos.

Briefly, an unpleasant memory surfaced of him on P3X-797, where the People of the Light lived, some of whom had been infected with a virus that turned them into primitives (or The Touched), like Neanderthal humanoids back on Earth and how he had become infected, too. Experiencing discomfort at his hormonally driven instinctive drives, including seeking a mate amongst others also afflicted with the virus, didn’t count, he rationalised guiltily, since he wasn’t in his right mind at the time. Thankfully, Daniel had very little memory of what happened when he had ‘gone native,’ as Jack had expressed it, diplomatically, and he was exceedingly grateful for his friend’s discretion.

As for being forced to have non-consensual intercourse with that evil bitch Hathor, rape was not infidelity as Sha’re knew too well, when Apophis forced her to bear his child – a ‘harsesis’ born with all the racial memories of their kind – and forbidden by the Goa’uld. Not that its prohibition had stopped him, and Sha’re, who returned home to her people on Abydos (her Goa’uld enslaver Amonet, briefly chose to hibernate dormant until she went into labour), explained Apophis intentionally conceived a child with a host ( his wife, Sha’re) so that one day, he could take as a host the human son he’d sired. As much as the whole situation sickened Daniel, he would never blame her; he understood Sha’re had as little choice to resist Apophis as he’d had with Hathor.

What he did blame himself for over that fiasco was that he’d been such a sap as to believe Hathor’s crap about being on the side of good (in this case the humans on Earth) which was why Ra imprisoned her deep in a Mayan temple, sealed in her sarcophagus. Yes, she was at war with Ra – her father/ husband (and yep, the Goa’uld were one depraved AND incestuous species), in addition to being evil power-mad narcissists, but that didn’t make Hathor one of the good guys. Unfortunately, his well-known, albeit naive, inclination to only see the good in individuals allowed her to take a foothold in the mountain without any resistance. What made it even more dangerous was the huge gender imbalance in the SCG program and the command that made it that much more difficult to defeat her.

The only reason his default naivete and willingness to see the good in everyone, which led to him vouching for her character to General Hammond and the subsequent mind control hadn’t ended in the SCG’s complete capitulation was because Sam possessed excellent combat training. That and the crucial fact that Teal’c’s natural immunity to Hathor’s dubious charms (aka mind control thanks to his larval Goa’uld) was the only male who was impervious to her control. Even Sam and Teal’c that may not have been enough to save their asses except that Janet Frasier was a very conniving individual, as well as one hell of a doctor.

She’d been prepared to do whatever she had to, including using her feminine wiles to neutralise the men and save the base. It was rather ironic when you think about it, as Hathor took over the base by using overt sexuality to get close enough to the males, including him, who he was ashamed to admit had been the first male to succumb to her mind-controlling substance. Janet managed to free the small group number female military personnel on base by playing Hathor at her own game, appealing to the horny guys left guarding them, using her sexuality to escape.

Plus, as doctors went, Janet Fraiser had been nothing but supportive of him after the dust had settled, and Daniel had realised what he had done. His DNA…his sperm had fertilised Hathor’s eggs to create Goa’uld larvae genetically compatible, so they were able to be implanted into humans. Those humans would, in effect, be incubators of the infant Goa’uld until they reached maturity. When it was over and Hathor escaped, he had been full of rage, disgust and self-loathing but Janet assured him he was not to blame for being raped and what distressed him even more, siring all those larval Goa’uld. He still had nightmares, and somehow, she always seemed to know and be there to remind him it wasn’t his fault; he was a victim, and he survived.

However, the definition of what constituted infidelity was much more blurred with Shyla, even though he was being affected by all the unnecessary time he was spending in the sarcophagus. He never had sex with her, but he kissed her, and there was heavy petting. Daniel knew that if King Pyrus hadn’t died when he did, he would have stepped over the line and had intercourse with her, not because he loved her or had forgotten the marriage vows, he’d made to Sha’re, but because he had ceased to care about right and wrong.

He knew Shyla was using him, forcing him to lie in the sarcophagus that her people had acquired when they had overthrown the minor Goa’uld who’d enslaved them. Yet despite seeing her manipulative tendencies, he started to crave the power that would be his should he marry Shyla. As the rest of that famous Nietzsche quote goes, “And if you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” He had become the monster in the abyss, and he didn’t care about right or wrong anymore, which was devastating to him because he had always been so critical of others whom he felt lacked moral courage.

Had Pyrus lingered on, Daniel admitted the King was old, feeble, weak, and it wouldn’t have taken much effort to depose him. Daniel probably wouldn’t have even needed to kill him to gain control. Then he would control the planet and a naquadah mine full of the element that Earth desperately needed to defend itself against the System Lords. Hell, they could eventually annihilate every single one of those murderous monsters, and he wouldn’t lose a second of sleep over it.

He told himself that the suffering endured by his teammates, while very unfortunate, was necessary for him to inveigle his way into the Princess’s heart and gain control of the mine. It would all be worth it once he was in control of the naquadah. He was certain General Hammond would understand and approve of his actions. How could he not? He would have all the naquadah they needed to silence the fools like Senator Kinsey and Secretary of Defence Swift.

As for him not loving Shyla, he doubted she was really in love with or attracted to him either. Infatuated, maybe, but not true love. No, the overindulgent, spoiled little princess was obsessed by the prophecy of a man from beyond the sun coming for her, not for Daniel Jackson like Sha’re, who loved him for who he was, warts and all. So, he felt no compunction about using her to get what he wanted…no, needed. She could have confessed the truth to her insane pater, King Pyrus, explaining that Daniel was trying to save her life, but instead, she played her little girl games of manipulation and misinformation with them all. Therefore, his using her by marrying her to get what he wanted, the control of their naquadah reserves…well, she would get what she deserved.

When King Pyrus died (the sarcophagus unable to keep his 700-year-old body alive any longer), Shyla freed Sam, Jack and Teal’c, apologising abjectly after Daniel agreed to their joining, Daniel still intended to go through with the marriage to gain control of the naquadah, though. He planned to go back to Earth to pack his belongings and return to take up the throne. So, he was furious when Jack and Hammond prevented him from going back and railed against them, accusing them of interfering and being jealous that he’d done what they couldn’t. On some level, even though he didn’t admit it to himself, subconsciously, Daniel knew that he couldn’t survive without access to the sarcophagus, so he continued to spew forth the fiction about having fallen in love with Shyla and how her naquadah mine would inevitably present the SCG with many strategic benefits.

Having to go cold turkey, aside from the supportive medical treatment to beat the horrendous addiction caused by misusing the sarcophagus, which had been hell. He’d become violent and suicidal; Jack was forced to physically restrain him to stop him from hurting himself or anyone else, and it was almost two months before he started to feel somewhat normal again. It suddenly occurred to Daniel that his return to confront Shyla had been nearly six months ago. After finally getting sober, he pleaded to be allowed to return and confront her; to tell her he wouldn’t marry her, and to convince her of the evils of the sarcophagus.

Despite her manipulations (much of which could be blamed on the side effects of her unnecessary use of the sarcophagus), Daniel hoped Shyla was not too pissed off at him for dumping her and manipulating her into destroying it. Even if, like every other addict who overcame their addiction, he wanted to spread the word about the benefits of sobriety, he was able to admit that six months ago, he was still struggling with how it fundamentally changed his character. Now he felt tainted by it!

The King’s loyal retainer Lo’av (who was masquerading as the First Prime of King Pyrus) met them as they came through the gate. Daniel, during his stay in the place as Shyla’s betrothed, had gotten to know the fake Jaffa reasonably well and was greeted somewhat civilly. Lo‘av glared resentfully at Teal’c, though, no doubt because the Jaffa had slammed Lo’av into a rock wall during their disastrous escape attempt. It was made plain to the party that Teal’c was still very much persona non grata among the palace guards.

Daniel introduced Lo’av to the rest of their party. Colonel Makepeace and his team were fairly bristling with mistrust, understandable since SG-1 had been incarcerated underground for almost two months and forced to carry out what amounted to slave labour. Like a large percentage of the planet’s inhabitants, they’d also been forced to mine naquadah since the planet was terrified of not achieving their quotas and attracting the attention of the Goa’uld. Well, most of SG-1 had slogged their guts out; he’d worked in the mine for a paltry day before the ill-fated attempt to escape and had been well fed and clothed while Sam, Teal’c and Jack had not! The now penitent and eight months sober Jackson felt a wave of shame wash over him.

Lo’av frowned censoriously at them. “Why have you come back here?” he demanded. Unspoken was the subtext, ‘you’re not welcome here’, but everyone got the unspoken message loud and clear.

“Friendly bunch,” Sergeant North muttered sotto voce as Makepeace shot an evil glare at him, sending a silent order for him to zip his lip.

“I would like to see Princess Shyla,” Daniel told Lo’av. “Where is she?”

Daniel (and probably everyone with him) could see that Lo’av was weighing up whether he would answer. Finally, he nodded.

“Follow me,” the fake Jaffa First Prime of Pyrus said gruffly, leading them away from the palace, which was a Goa’uld mothership.

Daniel looked at Teal’c and Makepeace and shrugged. “We often took strolls through the forest together,” he explained, not overly alarmed.

It was how they first met. SG-1 had been spying out the lay of the land, with a special focus on what they believed to be Jaffa, because something felt slightly off about the place. Which had turned out to be correct; they encountered a spoiled Princess, tempting fate by throwing herself over the cliff, forcing the prophecy she had grown up with from girlhood into coming to fruition. Although he couldn’t exactly say that in front of Lo’av and Shyla’s palace guards.

Worryingly, Daniel felt something was also not quite right since their arrival; he figured she might not be too happy to see him after he manipulated her into giving up the sarcophagus, but she wasn’t evil or violent. He was confident he’d be able to talk her around, plus with SC-3 all highly trained Marines, not to mention a real former First Prime of Apophis and Sam’s dad and Selmak, who were no slouches either, he was confident that they were safe enough if the natives tried anything. Although he couldn’t imagine why they should.

When Lo’av and two of his senior palace guards (pretending to be Jaffa sans Prim’tah) led them to what was quite obviously a graveyard, it was hard to miss the many graves filled with Lo’avs, Bra’locs, Dorn’tas and Huma’ls’ gravestones. There were at least a dozen graves for each of the four names, sometimes more, with other names less common among the burial plots, each one bearing what Daniel recognised as a Goa’uld symbol, one he wasn’t familiar with.

Seeing Teal’c had flinched, Daniel noted his friend’s reaction, quietly inquiring about what it meant

“Palace Guard,” he replied, equally as softly. “Awarded by a Goa’uld System Lord to their most trusted Palace bodyguards and personal attendants after their death. Awarded in recognition of lifelong loyal service. It is considered a great honour, and many Jaffa believe it will ensure they find their way to the afterlife – to Keb, where they will enjoy eternal health and happiness.”

The graves were highly ornate, in the tacky, over-the-top style of the Goa’uld, and Daniel marvelled at how far Pyrus and his people had been prepared to go to perpetuate the myth that the Goa’uld still ruled their planet. Gold symbology featured prominently.

Lo’av stopped momentarily at the grave of Lo’av number 14 and bowed his head before making a gesture Daniel felt was probably analogous to crossing himself, and the party looked at him questioningly. After his time on Jack’s team, he was used to interpreting non-verbal communication, although he admitted Marines were a whole other kettle of fish when it came to being enigmatic and hard to read. He guessed they wanted to know what they were doing in a graveyard, which was reasonable, though Daniel honestly didn’t think it was an overt threat, as in Lo’av was planning on killing them.

Sotte voce, he murmured to the rest of the group, “King Pyrus died last year. Shyla is probably paying her respects,” he explained with uncharacteristic brevity, feeling guilty that they were intruding on Lo’av’s grief. For all of her faults, he knew she had loved her father a great deal.

Lo’av soon collected himself, and Daniel, ever the eternal inquisitive archaeologist, couldn’t refrain from finding out about the multiple graves. He estimated that the fourteenth Lo’av’s grave appeared to be the most recent one (probably between ten and twenty years old) and made an intuitive mental leap as they continued along the path.

“Lo’av 14, was that your father?”

“Yes, I am Lo’av 15. All palace guards and personal attendants take the name of those palace servants who were overthrown 700 years ago, when King Pyrus led the revolution and vanquished our enslavers.”

He cast a challenging look at Teal’c, who merely bowed his head in his regal way.

“To preserve the story that Goa’uld are still in control of your planet, you have continued to adopt the names of your Goa’uld enslavers in case they return to check up on you?” Teal’c asked Lo’av quizzically.

Daniel conceded somewhat ruefully – from an outside observer’s perspective, his Jaffa teammate might seem to have been stern, rather than curious, but he had become well-versed in differentiating the admittedly nuanced physical manifestations of Teal’c’s moods. The Jaffa was being nosy!

“Yes. Usually, it is the eldest son who takes on the role of a Palace Guard or the daughter for a personal attendant of the Queen or princesses. They will step up when their parent or relative becomes too old to play the role. Sometimes there is an accident, illness or unexpected death, and no direct offspring to replace them and then a more distant blood relation must assume the position.”

A huge temple came into view that Daniel suspected belonged to Pyrus. Lo’av 14 shot an inquisitive, if suspicious, glare at Teal’c. “Did you truly defy your God, and he let you walk away?”

“No, Lo’av,” Teal’c corrected him with his customary gravity and courtesy. “My master was no god, nor are any of the Goa’uld. They are mortal. My friends and I, including Daniel Jackson, have killed many Goa’uld and will not rest until we have rid the world of their evil threat, freeing those whom they enslaved.”

Not unaware of the impact of his words, he answered the original question. “And yes, I defied the false god Apophis, and now I fight with the Taur’i to free my people from Goa’uld tyranny and oppression. The Goa’uld are not omnipotent!”

Lo’av, still visibly struggling to process Teal’c’s series of bombshells, and his two underlings (who Daniel hypothesised probably went by the names: Bra’loc, Dorn’tas or Huhma’), the original Jaffa who died in the uprising, led them towards the gaudy and ostentatious pyramidal crypt. He noted almost automatically that it had familiar Egyptian gold statuary and symbols typical of Goa’uld architecture – the grandiosity of the ancient Egyptian epoch appealing to the narcissistically parasitic race. They halted before the 6-foot-high black polished headstone proclaiming it was the eternal resting place of the beloved King Pyrus, as the three faux Jaffa knelt in pious supplication, repeating the gesture Lo’av had made before the grave of his father Lo’av 14.

Daniel felt vindicated in assigning its meaning to being akin to genuflection and crossing oneself. He stepped back discreetly, wanting to give them privacy, noticing a much smaller gravestone further down, away from Pyrus. Curious, he went to investigate, learning that Queen Camu also lay within the crypt in eternal rest. He concluded that she must have been Shyla’s mother – she of the infamous prophecy that a man would come from beyond the sun to save her daughter. Further along, almost at the corner of the pyramid’s face, was an even smaller gravestone, and he felt confused when it proclaimed the resting place of Prince Pyrus. There were no more gravestones, and after the Palace Guard had finished with their worshipping, mourning, or simply paying their respects to their dead king, Daniel asked about Prince Pyrus.

“He was the King’s son,” Lo’av responded, his tone failing to hide that he thought it was a stupid question.”

“When did he die? The Princess never said anything about a brother, even a dead one.”

“He died almost eight full moons ago. Not long after his father, King Pyrus, died.”

Jacob, who up until this point remained mostly silent (as, indeed, had Selmak, since they agreed that it would not be wise to reveal his presence to Pyrus’s people), spoke up. “Why did you not put the prince into the sarcophagus?” he asked, puzzled at their behaviour.

Seeing the Royal Family’s enthusiastic embrace of the Goa’uld healing device, even for the most minor ills, it was an excellent question, Daniel thought as he nodded at Jacob. Why indeed!

“Princess Shyla forbade us from doing so,” Lo’av revealed curtly.

What the hell! Why would Shyla do that, Daniel wondered, thoroughly mystified, given her enthusiastic use of it for even non-life-threatening purposes. And having lived for two months in the palace, how had he never met the prince?

“How old was Prince Pyrus when he died?” Daniel demanded curiously.

He was almost twelve harvests old. With his approaching Lahai Gai, he would soon have replaced Princess Shyla as the next in line to take over for his father,” Lo’av explained.

“Lahai Gai?” Sam’s dad looked over at Daniel.

“Coming of age, I suspect, something similar to a bar mitzvah,” he replied absently as the retired general nodded.

“So, as an adult male, he would have usurped her as heir to the throne,” Jacob stated, swiftly analysing the situation.

“Yes, unless the Princess was betrothed or already wed,” the faithful family retainer explained. “Then she would automatically be our Queen for life.”

“Was Prince Pyrus here when I was staying at the palace, Lo’av?” Daniel wanted to know. He really didn’t like the direction his thoughts were headed.

“No, with King Pyrus growing weaker, the Princess felt it was too stressful and ordered that Prince Pyrus stay with the prince’s former personal attendant. He only returned one week after the King died.”

“Which was four days after SG-1 left,” Teal’c observed diplomatically, his expression and matter-of-fact tone giving away absolutely nothing of his thoughts.

“Well, I suppose that explains why I never met him, though I’m surprised that the Princess didn’t mention him at all, though,” he commented, watching the palace guards’ expressions closely.

There was an awkward silence as the three fake Jaffa guards exchanged eye contact. Finally, one volunteered, “Princess Shyla and Prince Pyrus were not…close.”

“There was a large gap in their ages. Princess Shyla was two hundred and one harvests old,” Lo’av said diplomatically

“But why did she forbid you from putting the Prince in the sarcophagus to be healed?” Jacob wanted to know, finding it distinctly odd behaviour. Highly suspicious, even.

Daniel held his breath, very much wanting to know, too.

“The Princess said that the sarcophagus would harm him if he were put in it.”

“But he was already dead! How could it harm him? “Jay Felger blurted out incredulously as his colleague nodded his agreement. Along with Dr Coombs, the pair had remained silent during the conversations that had occurred so far, but this seemed ridiculous; how could it be worse than death?

Another silent conversation between the trio of palace guards ensued before one of the unnamed guards answered briefly. “We do not know.”

‘Bra’loc speaks the truth. Only the King and his heir know the secret of the magic of the gold casket,” Lo’av backed his fellow guard.

By this point, SG-3’s team medic, Captain Mary Lees, interjected, “Do you know how the Prince died?”

“Only that he fell ill after retiring for the night. He was found in a trance and died one day later,” Lo’av told them gravely.

Their party exchanged cynical looks, no doubt all reaching similar conclusions. The young prince had probably been murdered, possibly poisoned. However, it was Colonel Makepeace who realised that ultimately it wasn’t their business. They’d been sent here to try to discover if the sarcophagus was salvageable.

“We offer sincere condolences on the loss of Prince Pyrus, especially as it happened so soon after the death of the King. We should probably meet with Princess Shyla now to express our sympathy for her tragic loss. As she isn’t here, do you know where she might be?” Makepeace spoke for the first time, managing to sound surprisingly diplomatic, considering his usual bluntness.

Despite his civility, Lo’av frowned, and Daniel wondered what faux pas Makepeace had inadvertently managed to commit the first time he opened his mouth. He and the Marine colonel often riled each other up without even trying. Jack had that effect on him at times, but that was mostly because Jack deliberately set out to piss him off and watch him rant. Makepeace did it without even trying. Still, as much as he was no fan of the gung-ho Marine colonel who was also the third most senior military officer at Cheyenne Mountain, he also couldn’t see what he’d said that offended the natives, either. Not that he was kept in suspense for long, though.

“Princess Shyla is here,” Lo’av proclaimed as Bra’loc and the third unnamed guard nodded emphatically before they took approximately ten steps to the right of King Pyrus’ imposing gravestone and stopped, standing in front of a smooth section of the wall. Only now did Daniel realise a small black and gold bowl had been placed in front of the wall. In it was jewellery, including an intricate beaded necklace that he realised looked very familiar. Shyla had one like it. Plus, there was food, the fig-like fruit that Shyla ate every day, and the flatbread that was a staple of their diet, at least those who worked above the ground. Miners’ diets were far plainer and much less nutritious.

Basically, their diets could be described as subsistence rations since most of the people mined naquadah, so they barely produced many crops. Sam, Jack and Teal’c all had lost significant amounts of weight during their forced stint labouring in the mine. According to Janet, thanks to the poor-quality food, the inadequate amounts of it and the amount of physical labour they were expected to perform, they hadn’t just lost weight but alarmingly, their bodies had started breaking down their organs to supply them with the nutrients the food didn’t. They had got out just in time to avoid suffering permanent side effects, but it was close.

He felt a flush of deep shame about just how little thought he gave to them while Shyla was trying to manipulate him into becoming her consort. Reluctantly, Daniel pushed aside his guilt because it wouldn’t undo what was already done, but maybe he could make up for some of what he put his team through by helping save Jack’s son.

Refocusing his attention on the bowl, he studied the bunch of wildflowers tied with a red twisted cord, not unlike what the people of Abydos made from a flax-like plant. The flowers reminded him of the ones the Princess often picked when she and Daniel would go for walks, and she’d show him the ‘wondrous beauty’ on her planet, expecting him to be hugely impressed by it all.

Unfortunately, by that stage, the respectful, caring Daniel Jackson had disappeared, swallowed up by the power-hungry narcissist he had been transforming into. Much to his shame, when Shyla had waxed lyrical about her planet’s beauty, rather than pretending her planet was unique and more beautiful than anything he’d seen, Daniel mocked her for her naivety. And he was ashamed to say that, had felt a deep sense of satisfaction, humiliating her.

As he looked around the graveyard and saw no sign of Shyla, and he took in the bowl and its significance, he started getting a bad feeling in his gut. When Lo’av 14, Bra’loc and the unnamed palace guard, once again made the gesture they had previously surmised was a sign of reverence for the dead, his suspicion was confirmed.

“Are you telling us that the Princess is dead, too?” he demanded, aghast.

“Yes. The gravestone engraver has not been able to finish her memorial stone yet. He needed to make more carving blades before he could complete her memorial, after breaking his others while making King Pyrus and Prince Pyrus’ markers,” Lo’av explained. “It is why Prince Pyrus’ memorial stone was so small,” he said awkwardly.

Daniel, Teal’c and Jacob exchanged knowing looks. “That might be the truth, but not the whole truth. It was more likely that Shyla would not have wanted the prince’s memorial marker to be too large.

Teal’c gave the head palace guard the evil eye that visibly caused Lo’av and his colleagues to shrink. “How did the princess die?” he demanded sternly.”

Shooting a furtive look at Daniel, Lo’av started babbling. “It was two days after you returned through the Chuppa’ai and spoke with her, and then left again. The Princess became enraged. She attacked the Royal Sleeping Chamber with a staff weapon, shooting at it many times until a loud bang flung her into the air, and she landed heavily, hurting her head. We tried to fix it so we could place her inside it to be healed, but we didn’t know how.”

It was clear they had no idea that the sarcophagus was already not working, Daniel realised. They thought it had been destroyed when she attacked it with a staff weapon several days after Daniel convinced her to render it useless.

“She woke up later that night, and we praised the Gods that she would be well again; however, with each passing day, she became ever more… angry. Nothing we did was right; we became afraid for her, and she grew ill and could not sleep or eat. Our Beautiful Princess Shyla grew ugly, like a monster, inside and out…as if she was possessed by a Goa’uld,” Lo’av said before he grew silent, clearly still very distressed by the memory.

Daniel recognised the symptoms of addiction and withdrawal, having gone through similar ones himself, albeit under the professional care of doctors and nurses who supported him by giving him fluids and antiemetics to help curtail the nausea and vomiting, although it hadn’t stopped it completely. They rebalanced his electrolytes, which were all out of whack from spending too much unnecessary time in the sarcophagus when he was perfectly healthy; they had sponged him down when he was sweaty or threw up on himself. On one occasion, which he tried hard to forget, they’d cleaned him up when he soiled himself during a seizure before they could stop it in time. Most importantly, the staff and his team sat with him, held his hand to remind him he was not alone, and encouraged him to keep fighting.

Who had done that for the princess? Plus, how in Hell could he have overlooked the critical factor that Shyla had been using the sarcophagus for a lot longer than he did? Didn’t Lo’av say she was two hundred and one years old?

Bra’loc took up the tale, grimly. “The Princess, once gentle as a mayarahna windflower, grew violent and attacked her attendants and those tasked with protecting her. She stabbed Lo’av with a Royal Sabre. Fortunately, the wound was minor, but when she spoke of a prophecy and claimed she must find her true love, Lo’av ordered us to remove anything that could be used to hurt others or herself in her madness.”

“Oh GOD,” Daniel exclaimed in dismay, knowing suddenly how this horror story was going to end.

“The Princess managed to slip away from the guards who were watching her one night. She had frequently complained of being unable to sleep after the Royal Sleeping Chamber was damaged and no longer worked. Princess Shyla roamed the forest, sometimes for many hours, talking to the spirits of her ancestors. We believe she was exhausted and stumbled, falling over a cliff in the forest where she loved to wander. She knew those paths well, so we concluded that her exhaustion had caused her to fall. We found her dead at the bottom of the cliff, and without the Royal Sleeping Chamber, she could not be revived. Now she is resting with her beloved parents and brother,” Lo’av said sadly.

“Her great-nephew, Myat, is now the new King Pyrus, but he has only seen seventeen harvests,” Bra’loc offered gravely. The sentiment, young and foolish, seemed implied, if not spoken aloud. “Do you wish to speak with him about the matter you came to see Princess Shyla about?”

Daniel turned away from the conversation, completely shattered by the unexpected news as he stared at the temple wall where Shyla’s memorial stone would soon be erected. How could he not have seen this coming?

According to Janet, he could easily have died; he did die once, and without her timely medical intervention, would have died detoxing from the extended use of King Pyrus’ sarcophagus. Granted, the first time he entered King Pyrus’ so-called healing chamber, he needed it to save his life due to the life-threatening injuries he received when SG-1 tried to escape from the mine. But every other time he continued using it at the urging of Shyla, he had been perfectly healthy. On two previous occasions when he’d used it, Daniel suffered no ill effects: once when Ra killed him on Abydos and the second time onboard Apophis’ ship, orbiting the Earth after being seriously wounded. Abusing the sarcophagus when he was perfectly healthy quickly created a chemical and psychological addiction after two months. Shyla had to have been abusing the sarcophagus for more than a century, since Lo’av said she was two hundred and one years old, even if she didn’t look a day over twenty.

Why hadn’t he ever thought about how old she was? She told him her father had been king for seven hundred years

God. Damn. It. That really should have clued him in!

 

Chapter 7: Prophecies and Proselytising

“The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future, but to make it.” ~ Joel A. Barker

Daniel Jackson wanted to beat his head against the temple in his frustrated anger at himself, although he would not desecrate Pyrus’ people like that, so he restrained himself with difficulty. How could he have been so damn stupid?

He had more than one doctorate to his name, yet he never stopped to consider the ramifications for Shyla if she suddenly stopped using the sarcophagus. Why didn’t he ever give a thought that her withdrawal might be far more severe than his? More pertinently, why didn’t her having to detox occur to him at all, even if it had only been on par with what he’d gone through?

What the FUCK!

Even worse, knowing it was touch and go that he survived after he stopped using the cursed device, and he could be dead if not for the medical care he received under Dr Fraiser’s ministration, it never occurred to him to think about the risks for the Princess. How could he ignore such crucial factors when he guilted Shyla into destroying the sarcophagus?

She trusted him, and he wasn’t exactly unaware that he had that effect on people. Daniel oozed empathy and respect out of every pore and frequently talked his way out of trouble on missions. Hell, he’d managed to talk the remnants of Earth’s leadership in the alternate reality Earth he stumbled into (who faced annihilation by their reality’s Apophis), to sacrifice the ONE shot they had to dial up a wormhole to go to their Beta site and save him instead. He persuaded them to give up their last hope of preserving the vestiges of the planet’s population by repopulating on another planet, and INSTEAD to return Daniel to his reality with the coordinates of the Goa’uld. All so he could prevent a similar bloodbath in his reality.

You couldn’t get more persuasive or manipulative than that. Or more arrogant!

It was also fucking stupid of him because he could have gone through the gate to their Beta site with those last people from that reality and then use the gate on the Beta site to go back to P3R-233 where he touched the Quantum Mirror. Yet he convinced the people of their alternate reality Earth, whose people were just as important as those in his reality, to sacrifice their last chance of survival of the entire human race, to give it up, all so he could go back and warn the people in his

Could he have been any more arrogant if he set out to be? Honestly, he doubted it.

Damn! That was some awesome ability he possessed…maybe he should have been a con artist instead of an archaeologist. They might never have worked out how to open the Stargate if he had, he mused, trying not to think too much about that.

His thoughts returned to Shyla. He didn’t doubt she had felt guilty that she used his team against him, offering to free them to make him agree to marry her. Ironically by that stage, it was completely unnecessary, thanks to that fucking sarcophagus. Hell, after two months, he’d probably have agreed to marry Satan himself had he been there, if it got him the mine.

When he turned up, fully detoxed and earnestly proselytising about the evils of the Goa’uld technology, Daniel used her guilt to manipulate her just as she had done to him, and he told himself it was for her own good. He pointed out how it took away the father she adored, who was a hero for his people after defeating their Goa’uld oppressors, and how it had transformed him into someone violently paranoid, short-tempered, unable to be reasoned with and a cruel tyrant. Pyrus’ initial response to SG-1 when they were discovered by the palace guards had been to execute them. Shyla, despite withholding the fact that Daniel stopped her from flinging herself off the cliff, had managed to change his mind, but only by appealing to his cruelty, arguing that a life sentence of hard labour working in the mines would be an even more dire punishment than death. A punishment the King had adopted with gleeful alacrity.

Daniel had hammered home his point about the vile nature of the sarcophagus with a zealotry that could only have come from a new convert to a cult, like a born-again Christian suddenly finding God after living a life of crime and hate; like a reformed lifetime smoker finally kicking the habit after learning they had cancer; like a crack-head having tried to detox for decades and finally succeeded. Or, in Daniel’s case, a linguist cum anthropologist who had become addicted to a Goa’uld sarcophagus that had healed his eyesight and made him feel ten-foot-tall; invincible and ready to make the alien parasites who stole his beautiful wife away from him, pay for what they’d done!

He preached to her about the evils of Goa’uld technology. While he’d always been facile with language, his brush with death and his feelings of triumph and pride over the sarcophagus’ attempts to destroy everything he considered good about himself, which failed, but it had blinded him. After kicking his addiction, Daniel felt reborn, euphoric for defeating death and overcoming the seductive and destructive lure of the evil sarcophagus. In hindsight, he could see that it was all a part of his psychological addiction, which was just as real as the physical addiction and equally as powerful. Perhaps even more so than the high of being in the device, followed by hitting rock bottom when his access to it was removed, and he had to go cold turkey.

The psychological high of surviving found expression in his fervour to save Shyla from herself (i.e. her addiction). If he was being honest, proselytising about the evils of the sarcophagus felt amazing, like he was spreading a critically important message about evil and how it must be rejected. In truth, his single-minded determination to persuade Shyla not to use the Goa’uld device had merely become a crutch to replace the damn sarcophagus, and he set out to achieve his objective without a thought to how it would impact on her or indeed her people.

Crucial factors he should have investigated included: who would care for her, whether it was safe for her to stop using it suddenly, or should her time spent inside it, taper off gradually. And if so, how gradually given her long years abusing it. Why the Hell hadn’t he brought her back through the Stargate to the SCG so Shyla could detox safely under proper medical supervision? Plus, he suddenly recalled the Princess telling him that he wasn’t the first miner who required healing in the sarcophagus. Mining naquadah was a hazardous occupation, and they used it for healing catastrophic injuries… well, they did before it was destroyed!

Now, Daniel was forced to reconcile that his self-righteous actions, without any thought for the consequences, were the reason she was dead. For someone who was frequently critical of the military and railed against their all too often habitually closed-minded attitudes, the realisation that his actions caused Shyla’s death, trying to detox without a safety net, was devastating.

Still, as guilty as he felt, he recognised that the consequences were so much worse for her.

After learning what had happened to the Princess, Daniel pretty much zoned out, ignoring what was going on around him. His feelings were too overwhelming after learning how his actions had affected Shyla, persuading her to stop using the sarcophagus, and then making good and sure she couldn’t. He could hear various discussions going on around him, familiar voices murmuring in the background, yet all he could hear was his own accusatory voice in his head.

Shyla was dead, and it was his fault!

Adding insult to injury, what may have been a relatively simple fix for the sarcophagus, according to Jacob and Selmak, was now probably damaged beyond repair due to her frenzied series of blasts with a Goa’uld staff weapon. He’d failed her, and because of his reformed addict proselytising fervour and failure to think about the consequences, Charlie probably had no chance now of being healed. Okay… aside from blending with a Tok’ra and Jack, Janet and, perhaps most importantly of all, Charlie himself had already ruled that out as a viable option.

Which probably only left trying to contact the Nox as Jack’s son’s only hope of surviving.

Yeah, good luck with that, his inner voice mocked him, sounding an awful lot like the irreverent Colonel Jack O’Neill, who was not above sassing the Secretary of State when he thought he was being a jackass. Which, for the record…the SECDEF had been!

How ironic that Daniel’s insistence on trying to capture Apophis and interrogate him to learn of Sha’re and Skaara’s whereabouts was why the Nox concluded they were a violent race and wanted nothing to do with them. It was why they decided to bury their gate so the SGC couldn’t go back to the Nox homeworld. Not that it would stop the Goa’uld, who had spaceships. They could fly there in their ha’tak vessels, but the humans from Earth didn’t have vessels capable of making the journey.

Having learnt from Narim, who was one of the Tollan they rescued from the uninhabitable world of Tollana, that the Nox was part of a once great alliance between four races: the Asgard, the Furlings, the Ancients (who built the stargate system) and the Nox, SG-1 had realised in hindsight how badly they’d handled that first contact with them. It was this alliance of races that left data in the repository on Heliopolis, the planet where Ernest Littlefield spent fifty years alone, studying it. That was before Daniel, studying decommissioned films of the original Stargate Project by Katherine Langford’s father, accidentally learned that Littlefield was missing, not dead. A discovery that resulted in a successful rescue mission being mounted by SG-1 to bring him back home.

Unfortunately, their ability to access the incredible repository of knowledge was cut off by erosion, the whole facility dropping into the sea below, destroying all the precious data, aside from what Ernest had faithfully recorded. However, so much knowledge was lost, and Daniel had been devastated at the waste. His reluctance to leave the planet nearly cost him and Jack their lives when he’d been forced to go back and drag Daniel’s ass out of the library and through the Stargate as the place collapsed around them. Yet he had been talking to one of the original races and never knew what an opportunity was staring him right in the face, and he’d blown it.

The archaeologist knew damn well that Jack didn’t think trying to nab Apophis on the fly was a good idea. He’d pointed out their lack of planning and their dearth of adequate armaments, but Daniel hadn’t wanted to listen to reason. He just wanted to retrieve his beloved wife, Sha’re and had argued they could use the tranquillising agent they had brought to capture a fenri (an invisible flying creature), to catch Apophis and take him back to the base for interrogation. Hell, he knew exactly what sort of interrogation would be required to get the intel he needed so badly, and normally, he would eschew torture against a prisoner, but when it came to the Goa’uld, Daniel was happy to check his principles at the door. Just so long as he found his wife.

Jack, clearly dubious about the wisdom of his plan, had gone along with it nevertheless because he knew how desperate his friend was to find Sha’re. Daniel wasn’t a fool; in hindsight, he also knew Teal’c went along with the half-baked scheme because their Jaffa teammate suffered enormous guilt for the part that he played in Sha’re becoming a host to Amonet. But Daniel didn’t care that he was being manipulative. So long as he got what he wanted, he was prepared to use any method at his disposal, including manipulating the team and torturing Apophis to bring her home.

As for Sam, he could tell she thought it was a terrible idea and only agreed to go with the plan when Jack reluctantly acquiesced to try to capture Apophis, even if he thought it wasn’t a good idea. It turned out it be a horrendous idea, not just because it ruined any chance they had to forge a friendship with the Nox, but also because three of them died, Teal’c being cloaked by Antaeus’ family and whisked away didn’t die then. Jack, Sam and Daniel were all killed, as O’Neill had pointed out was a likely consequence when he first suggested capturing Apophis, citing they lacked adequate weapons and, as Jack had feared, were quickly overpowered.

The truly scary thing was that SG-1 had no clue that anyone was even living on the fenri’s planet, let alone a race that was advanced enough to raise them from the dead. To the best of their knowledge, the planet was uninhabited, and his need to capture Apophis could so easily have wiped out the entire team, but for the Nox. Had that come to pass, where would it leave Sha’re and Skaara? In hindsight, Daniel could see how irresponsible his actions had been.

Worse, they had succeeded in putting the Nox in danger from the Goa’uld and convinced them that humans were too violent and erratic for them to associate with. Now, when they needed the healing skills of the Nox, they couldn’t contact them. The truly frustrating thing was that Daniel did not doubt that if the Nox heard the story of Charlie’s existence, cloned by the Reetou (but very badly), to deliver a warning of massive genocide, Antaneus, Nefrayu, Ohper and Lya would have no problem healing him. After all, the poor little kid didn’t ask to be cloned, and he deserved to live his life, now that he had one. However, that was tragically beside the point since the Stargate was inaccessible and nothing the SGC could do would likely change that.

Still, the facts remained that it was Daniel’s fault that the Nox had turned their backs on them, and he was also responsible for the destruction of the sarcophagus in Shyla’s world, too. Charlie would die because the two best shots at saving him were a bust due to Daniel’s arrogance, thinking he could fix Shyla and too determined to capture Apophis to listen to reason, and damn the cost.

The irony that did not escape the archaeologist was that Daniel had long been highly critical of the military mindset. He accused them of being too focused on short-term goals or immediate gratification without bothering to study the long-term or even the medium-term ramifications of their actions. And yet, hadn’t he done the very same thing?

If Charlie’s life wasn’t hanging by a thread, he might feel some small sense of amusement at being taught that when the stakes were high enough, all his high morals didn’t mean as much as he thought. With Sha’re’s life in the balance, you bet he was more than ready to countenance torturing Apophis. Truthfully, had they been successful in capturing him, he doubted he’d have lost sleep over it, had it led them to his wife and her brother. Seemingly, the idealistic archaeologist was nothing more than a big fat hypocrite, and Charlie would probably die because of it.

After their return to the SGC, Daniel felt like he was on autopilot. During their mandatory examination by Dr Fraiser in the infirmary, to make sure they hadn’t picked up any unwanted hitchhikers and brought them back through the gate, he was barely responsive. Too caught up inside his head, wallowing in his sense of failure. After Sam’s dad, Jacob and his Tok’ra symbiote had expressed the opinion that a single blast or two from a Jaffa staff weapon probably wouldn’t have rendered King Pyrus’ sarcophagus unrepairable, Daniel started to get his hopes up.

He began envisaging how much having a son in his friend’s life again would transform it. Sure, he knew that for O’Neill, the unexpected discovery that he had a child would never undo the terrible grief and blame he felt over the first Charlie’s death. However, seeing how good he was with kids, with Cassie, Daniel reckoned it would still give him a great deal of joy and fulfilment.

Maybe it would even allow him to start the difficult task of healing, perhaps even foster a rapprochement between himself and his former wife. Seeing his behaviour around her after The Unity cut a swathe through Jack and Sara’s grief, when the well-intentioned but inept crystalline alien impersonating Jack sought out Sara O’Neill, it seemed very apparent to Daniel that Jack still loved her.

Ignoring the CMO’s obvious concerns about his zoned-out behaviour, when Janet cleared him of unfriendly or alien substitutions, he headed to the briefing room with Teal’c, knowing that General Hammond would want to debrief but essentially Daniel took no part in it. He was still too caught up in his guilt and grief. His brain kept up the refrain, ‘Shyla is dead because she listened to you.’

He left it to Colonel Makepeace (and wasn’t that an incongruous name for a gung-ho Marine) and his team of jarheads, plus Teal’c and the two scientists, to inform the general of what had occurred on King Pyrus’ planet, also known as P8N-Q76. Briefly, he noted that Jacob Carter/ Selmak was not present before apathetically deciding that it didn’t matter. They no longer needed Selmak. That much had been made clear after they sighted the sarcophagus, which had been much more damaged than the last time Daniel saw it when Shyla fired a staff weapon at the evil device. It was obvious it was well beyond the Tok’ra’s ability to fix – and along with her death, that was all down to him!

As he continued to wallow in his guilt over the Nox, Shyla and the sarcophagus, he let the content of the debriefing wash over him, barely taking anything in.

At least until General Hammond posed the question, “Do we know why the new King Pyrus would give us the broken sarcophagus?”

Okay, that pulled him out of his mental funk. Pyrus – the new one – did what?

“Selmak, communicating via General Carter, as we felt it best not to reveal his presence, suggested that if we could pool the crystals from Hathor’s and King Pyrus’ sarcophagi that weren’t damaged, perhaps along with any the Tok’ra may have collected, that it was possible we might be able to get the one at Area 51 functional again,” Makepeace reported.

“General Carter explained the situation to the young King Pyrus, who immediately agreed we could take the crystals, as they were of no use to his people,” Teal’c stated. “He was greatly distressed that the sarcophagus had been lost to them and hoped that some good could come out of their tragedy of losing both Prince Pyrus and Princess Shyla.”

Makepeace’s 2IC clarified further, “The new king Pyrus also explained that while the royal family had used it to greatly extend their lifespans, the Royal Sarcophagus also had a much more practical purpose. Workers in the Naquadah mines were frequently injured, often severely and like Dr Jackson, they would be placed into the sarcophagus to be healed.”

“Which was why I offered our medical services in the event of future mine injuries, SG-3’s medic explained. “Subject to your approval, of course, Sir. But I think that was why King Pyrus was more than happy to give us the crystals if it might help us to get our one fully functioning again.”

“I see,” Hammond nodded. “Well, that certainly explains his motives. Good job, by the way, Major. He sounds like a good leader who has his people’s interest at heart.”

“I concur, General Hammond. I believe, despite his youth, he will become a good and wise leader,” Teal’c agreed.

“So, Jacob and Selmak returned to the Tok’ra homeworld to collect any spare parts they may have acquired over their years of infiltration?” Hammond asked the Colonel.

“And to see if their experts in sarcophagus technology, a Tok’ra Anise and her host, Freya, were available to join Captain Carter at Area 51,” Makepeace told him curtly.

“Good, I hope they are available to assist us,” Hammond remarked. “I’m afraid that there have been…fireworks between Carter and the Canadian scientist in charge of studying Hathor’s sarcophagus.”

“I thought the Tau’ri reserved fireworks for celebratory purposes,” Teal’c interjected gravely. “Can we extrapolate from this that they have been successful?”

Most people in the room permitted themselves a brief chuckle. The general even smiled, albeit briefly, before explaining to the Jaffa who was regarding them all in a slightly quizzical fashion.

“No, Teal’c, it is merely a figure of speech. Captain Carter and Dr McKay have been disagreeing rather violently. The reports I’m getting from Dr Kusanagi, are that they’ve nearly come to blows on several occasions,” Hammond explained patiently.

Teal’c bowed his head in acknowledgement as was his wont. “I see. Captain Carter is a most skilled practitioner of hand-to-hand combat, as her battle with Chieftain Turghan on planet P3X-595 demonstrated. I am confident that, should she come to blows with Dr McKay, she will have no difficulty defeating him, unless he is extremely skilled. I would not be concerned,” he advised Hammond seriously. “It is my experience that most scientists are not,” he stated, sending Daniel an apologetic look.

Daniel, finally focused on the debriefing instead of wallowing in regrets, acknowledged the truth of his teammate’s statement with a weak grin. Based on the ass-kicking Sam had delivered to Chieftain Turghan on the Shavadai homeworld, on one of their first missions together after they forced her to dress up in that heavy silk dress and fancy headdress, she was plain scary. Teal’c was right about her being capable, but the general was speaking figuratively. At least Daniel hoped so!

If this scientist, McKay, was treating her as if she were stupid, well then, more fool him. If pushed far enough, maybe she might just challenge him to a fight. If so, Daniel was almost certain the dumb schmuck would get his ass handed to him. He could see the pools if that came to pass and wondered if Sgt Harriman was already taking bets. He wouldn’t put it past Walter – the man ran weekly pools on the chances that Master Sergeant Siler would end up in the infirmary, since Siler did seem pretty accident-prone, Daniel thought, perversely amused, in spite of his melancholia.

Hell, if there was a pool going, he’d be betting a few Ben Franklins on Sam, having seen her fight to the death, unlike most of the personnel at the SCG, and with luck, he would make a killing. He would donate his winnings to one of the NGO charities he supported, working with foster kids, having experienced firsthand how difficult it was to grow up in the foster-care system. Sadly, they were always desperately in need of funds.

~o0o~

Once the debrief was over, Hammond headed back into his office, mentally assessing the disappointing state of play regarding the possibility of repairing King Pyrus’ sarcophagus on P8N-Q76. It was very unfortunate that it had been further damaged, and he could tell that Dr Jackson had taken the news extremely hard. While it was obvious that he had kicked his addiction and was no longer contemplating marrying the Princess, nevertheless, news of her death had hit him hard. He was pretty much zoned out during the whole briefing.

Sighing heavily, George resolved to speak to Fraiser about referring him for more counselling asap when his musing was interrupted by a sharp double knock on the door.

Seating himself at his desk, George called, “Come.”

The door opened to reveal Teal’c, who entered as bidden, a serious expression on his dark features. But then the former First Prime of Apophis was pretty much always serious, George thought, watching the big guy as he moved with a grace that was lacking in most men of a similar physique. He was like a gazelle in comparison to a lumbering hippopotamus that most muscular types tended to resemble.

“Teal’c, what can I do for you, son?” he asked helpfully. It was unusual for the Jaffa to approach him officially, especially in his office. “Take a seat,” he gestured at one of the two chairs opposite him.

The warrior sank gracefully into the chair and took a moment to speak. “General Hammond, I wish to move something by you.”

He tried hard not to let his momentary confusion show. When Teal’c tried using colloquial English, inevitably, it was with mixed results. At times, the general found himself wondering if the Jaffa’s faux pas were as innocent as they seemed, although most people tended to give him the benefit of the doubt, as he was not indigenous to Earth and found much of their culture perplexing.

With good reason – hell, George often found much of youth culture unfathomable, and he was indigenous. He had on more than one occasion thought Teal’c was pranking them, but in case he was being too hard on their Jaffa ally, he endeavoured to maintain a straight face, even as he tried to parse the meaning of his statement. It took quite a few seconds before he realised Teal’c meant he wished to run something by him.

“I see. Well then, proceed.”

Teal’c regarded him calmly before asking, “Have you thought about what happens if the attempt to repair the sarcophagus at Area 51 is successful and Charlie O’Neill is healed and able to live a normal life?”

Okay, George was not expecting that. Honestly, he was expecting the Jaffa to make a case for undertaking a clandestine scouting mission to the Goa’uld planet where P8N-Q76 was sending massive amounts of naquadah every year. He admitted he had already considered sending SG-1 on a reconnaissance mission because Earth could use the ore to defend itself from the Goa’uld if the planet had been abandoned. Yet they didn’t want to endanger King Pyrus’ people either. Perhaps he shouldn’t wait until SG-1 was back on normal mission status; he could send Colonel Makepeace’s team of Marines with Teal’c as their scout. While he understood Robert Makepeace didn’t fully trust the Jaffa, Jack had absolute faith in his loyalty, and the bottom line was that the SG-1 team leader was one helluva judge of people. If his 2IC trusted Teal’c, then that was the only endorsement Hammond required.

The other most likely explanation for Teal’c’s seeking a meeting was to propose what would likely be a suicide mission to a Goa’uld stronghold to try to steal a functioning sarcophagus. Something Georget had already considered privately. Since Jack hadn’t hesitated to help the Jaffa save his son twice, and at considerable personal risk, Teal’c wanting to return the favour wasn’t a surprise. Plus, putting aside any debts he might feel he owed his leader, Teal’c was also a devoted father who would empathise with the colonel. So, George felt decidedly wrong-footed by his inquiry.

Realising he was yet to respond to Teal’c’s question, he replied gravely, with a shake of his head. “No, Teal’c, I can’t say I have.”

“I believe this to be a mistake, General,” the Jaffa replied bluntly. “Is it not better to be prepared?”

George shrugged before answering. “Usually, that is a good rule to follow, but you see, humans tend to be a bit superstitious in situations such as this one. We have a saying about not putting the cart before the horse, because it might bring bad luck.”

“I do not see what a horse or a cart has to do with bad luck,” Teal’c looked perplexed. “Does not the cart always follow the horse?”

“Exactly. But putting the cart – in this situation, the proposition that we can save Charlie, before the horse, which is that we can get Hathor’s sarcophagus working again, it feels like we are tempting fate only to be let down.”

Teal’c’s expression did not change as he took in George’s explanation. “I see,” he bowed his head. “However, in this instance, I believe it to be a mistake not to plan for a future where Charlie O’Neill survives, even if that chance is remote.”

“Why are you so concerned, Son?” George asked him curiously.

He wondered why Teal’c often seemed to bring out his avuncular side. After all, with his extended longevity due to Junior in his pouch, they were probably of a similar age. Though for Teal’c, he was still very much in his prime, not that George envied him. His larval Goa’uld might give the Jaffa incredible strength, immunity and longevity, but it also meant his people had greatly restricted autonomy.

“Should Charlie-O’Neill survive, then I fear that his safety will be under threat,” Teal’c stated baldly.

“Threat from whom?” Hammond barked at him, feeling alarmed.

“From sections of the Tau’ri, possibly the Goa’uld and even some of the Tok’ra resistance, the Jaffa replied seriously.

Seeing the look of alarm on George’s face, he explained. “His ability to see and communicate with the Reetou makes him unique as far as anyone knows. It makes him extremely valuable, and we know that there are Tau’ri who would stop at nothing to acquire him for their own selfish purposes. It would not be the first time,” he stated with deep conviction.

With a start, Hammond realised what Teal’c was alluding to. After he helped save SG-1 and SG-2’s asses on Chulak by defecting from Apophis’ Palace Guard as his First Prime (which amounted to his head general) and had saved hundreds of civilians who his former God had ordered to be killed, Jack had offered him asylum. Rather naively, as it turned out, since the NID (and others hiding behind their banner) had immediately claimed that Teal’c was a national security risk and tried to take him into custody. No doubt to study him, and not necessarily while he was still alive, but fortunately, the tragic situation with Major Charles Kawalsky escalated, and Teal’c had been instrumental in resolving a horrendous foothold situation with minimal fallout.

It also gave George the leverage he needed to thwart Kennedy and his Military Intelligence associates’ attempts to snatch the Jaffa and turn him into a lab rat. However, the forces that Teal’c referred to merely slid under a rock, waiting and focusing on being better prepared when their next shot arose.

Which, of course, happened sooner than anyone expected. Despite Teal’c and his mentor helping O’Neill to prevent the total annihilation of the planet last year by Apophis with his Jaffa army in two Ha’tak vessels, they bided their time, waiting. Then, on a later mission, when Teal’c was bitten and infected by alien insects, they tried to gain custody of him again. They wanted to study him as the alien bug overwrote his DNA, despite the presence of his larval Goa’uld or Junior, as the irreverent Colonel O’Neill referred to it. No doubt they hoped to develop a biological weapon to use on the Goa’uld and Jaffa, and they had no intention of trying to save him.

George shook his head disgustedly, experiencing genuine shame, anger, guilt and regret about how badly Teal’c was treated by some of his colleagues following his recruitment to their cause. Yet despite Colonel Maybourne, Kennedy and Samuels, Military Intelligence, the NID and the other sick fucks hiding behind their anonymity, Teal’c had constantly proved his loyalty to the SCG beyond doubt, completely vindicated Jack’s abiding faith in him.

“I’m so sorry, son, for the atrocious way sections of our government acted towards you,” he apologised again, feeling embarrassed at how they treated a valued ally.

Teal inclined his head as he acknowledged the general before saying,” I was not just referring to myself, General Hammond. I was thinking of their extreme attempts to gain control over the Tollans, who we rescued from their homeworld when the volcanic gases rendered them near death,” he observed grimly.

“My God, Teal’c. I hadn’t stopped to think of it like that, but you’re right.”

“I do not wish to be right, General Hammond, but I fear I am. Charlie O’Neill will be in danger should Captain Carter and Dr McKay repair the sarcophagus and heal him.”

“Right, in that case, forget about what I said regarding not putting the cart before the horse,” George said forcefully.

“So, we start looking at carts?” Teal’c said, his expression typically deadpan, and Hammond still couldn’t tell if he was serious or having a joke at his expense.

“Damn straight we do! So, do you have any suggestions?”

“Persuade people that Charlie O’Neill died.”

“That would be difficult if he lives,” George pointed out thoughtfully.

“Not if he was hidden away. We could say he went to the Tok’ra to be healed, but he was sick and passed away,” Teal’c countered.

“But where would we hide him? Not with the Tok’ra!

“No, I do not think O’Neill would wish for that. Perhaps hide him with the people in the Land of the Light, where Drey’auc and Rya’c have been granted sanctuary. My son could be a brother to Charlie O’Neill,” he said.

“Well, that is one option. Would Drey’auc agree to look after him, though?” George wondered.

“We owe O’Neill for his vigilance when it came to Apophis using Rya’c to infiltrate the Earth and destroy it. He would have died, along with everyone else, and Drey’auc feels, as do I, that we owe him our son’s life,” he said.

“Well, it is one option, although I think it would only be temporary. If he survives, I think Colonel O’Neill will wish for Charlie to live here on Earth, if possible. We need to figure out how they can stay together,” Hammond said seriously.

Perhaps his mother would want to be involved in his care, and after the circus with The Unity aliens last year, she had to be read in on the stargate and had already signed the standard SCG NDA. Although, to be fair, there was nothing standard about their non-disclosure agreement. It was massive!

The Jaffa and the general continued to toss around scenarios and places they could potentially stash Charlie, should the sarcophagus become operational. Right now, it seemed a remote possibility, but hopefully, with the inclusion of the Tok’ra’s top scientists Anise/ Freya, it remained a possibility.

George couldn’t help wondering, though, if adding yet another brilliant scientist to the team, one who was likely to be very arrogant, given it seemed to be a collective characteristic of the Tok’ra, according to Jack, if they could all work together. Would there be blood spilled if they succeeded in getting it fully operational? Although he rather thought Sgt Harriman already had a pool running on whether they could get it working again. He would be quick to create a new one, predicting how soon blood might be spilt regardless of success or failure.

While George generally turned a blind eye to Harriman’s betting pools, he was far from ignorant of what went on his base, plus Jack usually kept him abreast of such things if he did miss it. Sure, betting was against regulations, but in such a dangerous assignment, a little diversion was sometimes necessary to maintain morale in such a dangerous setting. While he suspected that Colonel Makepeace would shut the sergeant’s side hustle down if he were the Executive Officer of the base, Jack was simpatico with George’s laissez-faire stance when it came to betting pools.

Plus, Jack, if he thought the pools were rigged, someone was cheating, or anyone made too much money out of what was intended to be a morale-boosting diversion from the ever-present danger the SGC staff faced daily, was very quick to step in and handle it in his own inimitable fashion. Already, George was aware he’d somehow persuaded one of the enlisted who was running bets on new personnel with regards to sexual orientation in defiance of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ had resulted in the offending medical technician seeing the error of his ways. Rumour had it that he had threatened the homophobic corporal with a few well-placed rumours in the right ears regarding how his bigotry may mask his own ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ standing.

Somehow, after that, word had passed around like wildfire that while O’Neill might turn a blind eye to harmless betting pools, it was far from a free-for-all. Consequently, people on base (military and scientists) swiftly got the message that he might seem easy-going, at least as colonels went, but he also had worked Black Ops for a reason. People took the warning seriously.

On another memorable occasion, one of the computer geeks had used the base computers to create a program to predict the winner of the annual Army versus Navy Football game and bet a grand, sweeping the pool. With the help of Samatha Carter who was a terror behind a computer keyboard, in terms of hacking and forensics, she and O’Neill figured out he misused military resources to cheat, and Jack forced him to ‘donate’ his winnings to a charity for widows/widowers and their offspring of veterans killed in the line of duty. He’d also threatened the corporal that should it happen again, Jack would make it his business to see that he’d be demoted and reassigned to Outer Mongolia.

When George questioned why he hadn’t gone that route in the first place, Jack shrugged and said the kid was barely 22 years old, and he reckoned an ass kicking might straighten him out. Hammond knew Makepeace would not have been so forgiving, probably recommending a court martial and BCD, but the CO agreed it had been the right thing to do. Corporal Stone had knuckled down and was doing good work at the SGC.

With a sigh, he contemplated what life at the SCG would be like if Charlie died and Jack failed to return. He felt it would be very different should Robert Makepeace become his XO. He suspected that morale would be affected, not to mention that the colonel would expect to be given command of SG-1. George couldn’t help the involuntary shudder that overcame him at the thought of Makepeace leading Jack’s team of Carter, Jackson and Teal’c. The jarhead had no time for civilians and did little to hide the fact he thought Dr Jackson had too much influence at the SCG, while he also made no bones about his distrust of Teal’c and suspected that if he took over from Jack, neither would be on the team for long. Carter was a good officer and would obey his commands, but wouldn’t be happy and may well request a transfer to a secondary SG team.

Frankly, he wasn’t even sure why the Marine wanted to command SG-1, but it probably had something to do with cachet and status. Not to mention that Major Ferretti led SG-2, which the jarhead seemed to see as a personal slight against him as a superior officer, when it was all about when he arrived at the base. SG-2 had already been formed and was operating seamlessly as the junior team, supporting SG-1 when required. Honestly, he believed that SG-3, which consisted of all USMC personnel, was a much better fit for his third-in-charge. Besides, Ferretti had been on the original mission with O’Neill when they first went through the gate to Abydos. The two officers (along with the dead Major Kawalsky) had worked together as a team, so it made sense to send SG-2 as backup when it was required.

Resolutely turning his focus to the surprising visit to his inner sanctum by Teal’c, Hammond realised he shouldn’t have been stunned by his identifying a potentially serious security issue. As Apophis’ First Prime, he had been responsible for a whole damn army of Jaffa warriors and clearly, while a force to be reckoned with physically, was also an excellent strategic thinker. It was all too easy to underestimate him, especially when he ceded authority so gracefully to Jack and showed great deference to George, too. Although he suspected that it was more a mark of how much respect Teal’c held for the Colonel, as the general thought about Teal’c’s offer to hide Charlie with his wife and son on the Land of the Light. That was supposing that the sarcophagus could be repaired,

Perhaps he should also put surveillance on Jack’s cabin because Teal’c was right. There would be plenty of people, desperate to get their hands on the lad who could see and talk to aliens invisible to everyone else in this galaxy. His thoughts immediately turned to SG-2, who were on stand-down for a week after receiving some minor injuries on an off-world mission, and Dr Fraiser insisted they take time off to recover and decompress. George trusted Jack and, by extension, Charlie’s lives to Ferretti and his team implicitly. Plus, Ferretti would be furious if he didn’t ask them if they wanted in on the mission to keep watch on Jack’s cabin while they were staying there.

George felt certain SG-2 would leap at the chance of spending time in Minnesota, and as a bonus, they would keep it on the down low. If he called in a regular protection detail, they run the risk of gossip and loose lips, which would defeat the purpose of being Jack and Charlie’s backup.

 

Chapter 8: Snow Days and Fireside Hugs

“A hug is a perfect gift—one size fits all, and nobody minds if you exchange it.” ~ Unknown

Day two at Jack’s cabin:

On the first morning after arriving at his cabin, Jack was up early. He’d slept poorly, getting up at least half a dozen times during the night to check that Charlie was still breathing. Thankfully, he was, but it did little to reassure his inner father since he wasn’t under any illusions about how dire his son’s situation was. Sitting at the timber table his grandfather had constructed after building the cabin, O’Neill resorted to comfort-eating, guiltily indulging himself, chowing down a bowl of cereal and milk.

“Dad, what are you eating?” Charlie asked him curiously.

He had woken up and made his way to the main living room, which was large open plan and also served as a kitchen cum dining room.

Busted! Jack groaned inwardly at being caught out eating his guilty pleasure. Fraiser would kill him if she knew. On the other hand, Charlie was dying, and there wasn’t anything they could do to reverse it, so why not let him live a little, even if that meant letting him eat junk food? He and the first Charlie always ate Froot Loops when they were staying here in the cabin when it was just the two of them since Sara didn’t exactly approve of her son eating the sugary crap for breakfast. It was their father and son tradition, and even after Charlie shot himself, Jack found himself honouring the tradition when he came back here alone.

“It’s a breakfast food called Froot Loops,” he answered. “Charlie and I used to eat them when we came here, just the two of us.”

“I like all the different colours,” the young boy observed before asking tentatively, “Can I have some too?”

Yeah, as if Jack hadn’t seen that one coming. “Sure, but it’s our secret, okay? You can’t tell Cassandra’s mom, or I’ll be in big, big trouble.”

“Did the real Charlie keep it a secret from Dr Fraiser?”

“She never met him. I went to work at the SGC after he died,” Jack explained. “And you’re a real Charlie, too,” he said, meaning it, although secretly, he did wish Charlie had chosen a different name. However, it was still much better than Son, which was how Mother addressed him. Jack had vowed that his new son wouldn’t know the pangs of grief it caused him when he heard the name of his dead son.

“Mother explained how babies get made on Earth, and she told me how I was born. I’m a copy,” he said matter-of-factly, making Jack angry at fate and Mother for making his kid feel like a fake.

“Not all babies. Some are made in a lab and then carried by their moms. Yeah, I know it’s not the same as you, kiddo, but that just means you’re special, Charlie. Plus, you can see and speak to Reetou. No one else on Earth can do that,” he pointed out as he put a handful of the sugar doughnut-shaped rings in a bowl, added a small amount of milk and motioned for him to sit before handing him the bowl.

After trying a few mouthfuls, Jack asked, “What do you think?”

“I think they taste better when they’re crunchy,” he replied. “The liquid makes them sloppy,” he said with a moue of disgust.

Jack chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what your brother used to say too, but the Froot Loops turn the milk a kind of pinkish purple colour and make it sweet too, kinda like a shake,” he explained. “So, it has its good points.”

He scooped up the remainder of his Froot Loops, shovelling them into his mouth as he offered Charlie the bowl so he could see what he meant.

The little boy stared into his dad’s bowl, and his eyes popped wide open. “That’s so cool,” he proclaimed as his dad smothered a smile. It was his new favourite phrase, taught to him during his short exposure to Cassie, who, at thirteen, had embraced the teenage lingo of her adopted planet.

“Try it,” Jack exhorted him playfully as he briefly demonstrated putting the bowl to his mouth and taking a sip.

Cautiously, Charlie mirrored his actions, taking a small sip before a huge smile spread over his pale face, announcing in all seriousness, “But I think they should be called Star Gates, because they are shaped like the Stargate. They are a circlish with a hole in the middle,” he observed impishly.

“A circle or they are circular,” Jack corrected gently.

Again, Cassie had wasted no time teaching him about shapes so the pair could play some basic card games while he was in the infirmary. She had been so great with him, understanding how many regular games that Earth-born kids their age played weren’t practical since, as non-natives of Earth, they usually didn’t read, write or have basic numeracy skills. Plus, she and Janet had packed plenty of activities, books and movies to help keep an eight-year-old occupied, selected keeping in mind his lack of knowledge about many of the cultural things normal kids learned automatically.

Charlie was staring at Jack strangely. He worried that his son might have been upset at being corrected. “Whatcha lookin’ at?”

“You have milk on your…” he pointed at his lip, not knowing the correct word.

“My lip?”

“Yeah, your lip.”

His dad chuckled, “You do, too.” He pulled out the small mirror he’d used to check that Charlie was still breathing during the night rather than waking him up, to show the boy his reflection.

“That’s me?” he said wonderingly.

“Yep, with the milk moustache,” he teased gently.

The small boy giggled. “Dad, I like Froot Loops. Can we have some tomorrow?”

Jack chuckled harder. “Yeahsureyabetcha,” he responded. “Just remember, when Dr Fraiser checks in today…”

“Don’t tell her. It’s a secret,” Charlie parroted conspiratorially, even miming zipping his lip.

It was something else Cassie Fraiser had obviously taught him, Jack thought in amusement!

“That’s my boy,” Jack praised him proudly, trying not to think about how little time they had together. There’d be plenty of time for grief and regrets later, now he needed to make each precious moment count.

After they cleaned up following their wildly unhealthy but super fun breakfast, Charlie was eager to learn what they were going to do. “Can we go outside? Can we ride on those big circle thingies?” he demanded excitedly.

Jack shook his head. “Not today, Charlie.”

“But why not?” he pouted. “I feel okay, I promise.”

“Not the problem,” his dad said. “Go look out the window,” he was told.

Charlie slowly crossed from the dining table to the window and looked outside. “For crying out loud,” he exclaimed in exasperation (and it seemed that Cassie wasn’t the only one teaching his colloquialisms). “What’s all that white stuff all over the ground and falling from the sky?”

“It’s called snow, Charlie. It’s frozen water, and it happens in some parts of the Earth when it gets very cold, like in Minnesota in February. We had a snowstorm during the night while you were asleep.”

“So, is it normal?”

“Yeahsureyabetcha it is,” Jack reassured him gently. “If the storm sets in, my pond will freeze over and turn into ice, and when it warms up, the snow and ice will melt. But until the storm stops, we must stay inside.”

“Why can’t we go on a ride?”

“Because quad bikes aren’t built to ride around in the snow. You need special machines called snowmobiles to travel safely through snow and ice,” Jack explained patiently.

Although he had a snowmobile stored out in the shed for use when the winter snowstorms set in, he didn’t tell Charlie that. If the storm cleared and the temperature rose tomorrow, as forecast, he would get it fueled up and operational after sitting idle for months and take his son on a ride. However, today, the weather was much too inclement for them to venture out with his compromised health. Right now, the temperature, combined with the wind chill factor and the poor visibility, made venturing outside too dangerous unless it was an emergency. O’Neill was just glad he’d laid in a good supply of wood for the fire last night after Charlie had fallen asleep, thoroughly exhausted by their trip from the SGC and the exploration of their new place.

“Can we still go for a walk to the lake like you promised?” his son asked.

“Not until the storm stops,” Jack told him.

Seeing his utter incomprehension and wanting to pre-empt any further arguments, Jack fetched a bucket that he kept in the kitchen, slipped on his thermal gloves and told Charlie to stand by the door but not go outside, he raced out, clearing the porch swiftly but carefully and scooped up a bucketful of snow, backtracking to the entrance where the little boy waited as ordered. He was shivering despite being warmly dressed in thermal underwear and flannel pyjamas. Slamming the front door of the cabin shut, Jack hurried over to the roaring fire with the bucket of snow. Calling Charlie over, he invited the small boy to put his hands in the snow.

“It’s cold!” he exclaimed in surprise.

“Yep, it sure is, pal. And did you feel how cold it was outside when I opened the door?”

Wide-eyed, the boy who had grown up on Retalia, where snow was not a thing, nodded.

“We don’t go out in a snowstorm, Charlie, because we can too easily get lost or get hurt and freeze to death if the weather is this cold. Do you understand?”

“What does freeze mean?” Charlie asked, his teeth chattering with the cold.

Jack picked him up and plonked him on the kitchen counter, quickly making his way to the refrigerator, pulling some ice cubes out of the freezer section and handing them to his son. “That used to be water that came out of the tap. The cold temperature turned the liquid into a cold, hard solid. That is what freezing or frozen means.”

“Can people turn into ice?”

“Yes, which is why we are going to stay in the cabin and keep warm until the storm dies down and it is safe for us to go outside again,” Jack said, hoping he’d impressed upon the child the seriousness of Charlie not going outside during the storm.

“Do you understand why we can’t go out?” he asked as he hurried them back to the fire, snagging a thermal quilt off the sofa/futon and wrapping them both in it, knowing his body heat would help warm Charlie up rapidly as they settled by the fire on a footstool.

“Yes, I understand, Dad. We have to stay in the cabin,” he replied. “So, what will we do instead?” he asked as he snuggled into the solid warmth of Jack’s embrace.

“There’s lots to do,” he promised playfully.

“What did the First Charlie like to do up here when he couldn’t go outside?” he asked curiously.

“He liked playing card games and drawing. Sometimes, we would build model planes or make model rocket ships together. He loved stuff about outer space and knew all kinds of things about the rest of the planets in our solar system.” Seeing the bemused look, he explained, “All of the planets closest to Earth.”

“Like Cassie’s world and Teal’c?”

“No, their worlds are a long way away. We don’t have spaceships that are powerful enough to fly there, we have to travel by using the Stargate.”

“Don’t you mean the giant Froot Loot?” he joked, smiling mischievously, and it made Jack proud that Charlie seemed to have inherited his quirky sense of humour, simultaneously feeling a terrible ache in his heart that he would only have him for a short time.

Not anywhere near enough time for him to get to know him properly. He felt cheated, and although at the time when the first Charlie died, he railed against the injustice of having his boy for such a short time, in comparison to the nearly nine years they spent together, the few weeks his new son and he had together was so damn inadequate…so unfair.

Unfair, Jack, but at least you get to spend it with him. This Charlie will never get to know his real mother, and while your reasons are noble, she will never get to know him. Sara probably won’t ever know of his existence, even though she contributed half of his genes.

~o0o~

Charlie settled in to rest several hours later. He wished he didn’t get tired so easily. Cassie didn’t, and when he asked her mother, Dr Frasier, why he did, she told him it was because his organs were struggling hard to work because they were wearing out much faster than normal. He liked Cassie’s mother a lot; she was kind, and when she smiled, it made him feel nice inside, although he liked Cassie even more. Not just because she was pretty, really pretty, but because she wasn’t from Earth either. She understood how much everything felt so confusing to him. In the few days they spent together, Cassie, whose real name was Cassandra, had started teaching him things, like how to count things, and the names of different shapes and colours. When he got tired, she brought books with pictures of what Earth looked like above the place where the SGC was, since she said they were under the ground. He didn’t understand a lot of the things she showed him, but it looked… cool.

Cassie taught him that word. She said it meant something good. Although his dad used that word too, but differently. When they made s’mores over the fire, he told him to let the s’mores cool down before eating them, or he would hurt his mouth. Seeing how confused he felt (Jack was good at figuring out when he didn’t understand, even when he didn’t say anything), he explained that cool down meant to get less hot, to go cold. He also explained that on Earth, lots of words have more than one meaning, which made Charlie wonder how the people on this planet ever understood each other.

But there were lots of other things that confused him, and not just words or pictures…hugs, for example. The first time his dad hugged him, he was upset. He and Dr Fraiser explained that Mother had been in such a hurry to create him that she hadn’t done it right. Dr Fraiser explained it was very hard to create someone using cells from someone who died, like his brother had. It was much easier to make a person the usual way with a mother and a father.

They said that because of Mother’s mistakes, his body couldn’t work properly, and soon it would stop, and then he wouldn’t exist. But the Tok’ra (who was sort of like a Goa’uld, only not mean), whose name was Selmak, and his host Jacob, who was Samantha Carter’s father, believed they might be able to fix his body. A Tok’ra could blend with him, living inside him. Just like Selmak had done when Jacob’s body stopped working and he went inside him to make him well.

Jack explained that now Jacob and Selmak shared Jacob’s body, unlike the Goa’uld, who took over a human’s body and wouldn’t share it, and were very bad, mean aliens. The Reetou hated the Goa’uld because they wanted to kill all the Reetou, but Jack told him the Tok’ra were good guys.

He believed him. Kind of, but Charlie couldn’t help that he didn’t want to share his body. He asked if he could still stay here on Earth with Jack if he shared his body with a Tok’ra? He knew that Jack was Charlie O’Neill’s father, the real Charlie, and he was just a copy, but Mother had told him he couldn’t tell Jack about it. She explained he would be angry because she took some of the real Charlie’s body (tiny cells) without asking if she could copy him. He knew she’d done it because Mother trusted Jack O’Neill but not anyone else.

Mother was afraid that if Jack knew that she had made a copy of the Real Charlie, then his dad would be too angry to listen to him. It was his job to warn the humans about the Reetou Rebels’ plans to wipe all humans out of existence so they wouldn’t be hosts for the Goa’uld and destroy the Reetou. No one else could do it because Mother told him the Reetou were out of phase and invisible to all the humans in the galaxy except for Charlie, so he had to warn them.

So, when Jack explained that if he shared his body with a Tok’ra, he couldn’t stay here on Earth with Jack, Charlie didn’t want that. He wanted to stay with Jack! After he warned them about the Rebel Reetou who wanted to kill all humans, Mother told him she would return to Retalia soon. She explained that now that Charlie had told the humans what the Central Reetou Authority wanted the humans to know about the Rebels, she was going to leave him here on Earth, with his father’s people. When he got upset, she explained she didn’t want to leave him, but she was scared that the Reetou Rebels would try to kill him too, because he was human.

Although he was sad that he couldn’t stay with Mother, and she told him boys didn’t cry, Jack told him that Mothers leaving was a good reason for him to cry. So, Charlie really hoped his father would let him stay with him if he couldn’t be with Mother. The problem was that Jack didn’t know that he was a copy of Real Charlie and that he was his father too, because Mother told him he mustn’t tell.

When Dr Fraiser and Jack told him he was ill and needed to let a Tok’ra, a creature who looked like the Goa’uld, live inside him so he could live, even though they promised the Tok’ra were nothing like the Goa’uld, he was afraid. If he could live with Jack, maybe it would be worth it to have to share his body. After all, he already shared it …sort of with the real Charlie…or was Real Charlie sharing his body with the copied Charlie? He was so confused, but he said he didn’t want to go to another planet and live with the Tok’ra and share his body, even if they could fix it up for him so he got to live a long time, if it meant he couldn’t live with Jack. He’d rather spend the time he had until his body stopped working, here on Earth, so long as he could stay with Jack.

Then, when Dr Frasier explained that they already knew Jack was his father and they figured out how Mother made him, he was scared they would be angry and send him away. He was happy not to have to pretend anymore that Jack wasn’t his father, though.

Charlie hoped his father wouldn’t send him away, and they could be together until his body stopped working. That was when he blurted out the question: could he now call Jack, Father? When Jack said no, he didn’t want to be called Father, Charlie burst out crying, despite what Mother said about boys on Earth not doing that. He couldn’t stop the tears; they burst out of him!

This was when Jack had picked him up and held him close to his chest, rubbing his back as he explained that the first Charlie didn’t call him Father either. He called him Dad, and Jack said he wanted Charlie to call him Dad too. He felt so happy that he had no words to describe how he felt.

His dad’s hug made him feel so great, too, so it had been very confusing that instead of stopping his tears, it had made him cry even more. It didn’t make sense, or that Dr Fraiser and his dad’s eyes also started to water, too.

When he first met Cassie, she started teaching him things because she knew what it was like not growing up on Earth, and so he had asked her to explain hugs to him. The first time Jack hugged him when he was crying and sad at the SCG, he didn’t know what it was, even though he liked it a lot.

Cassie had patiently explained to him that people hugged other people they loved or liked a lot. Parents, especially, hugged their kids a lot to show them how much they loved them and to make them feel special. They also hugged them to make them feel better when they were feeling sad, sick or unhappy because they wanted to make them feel happy.

Cassie told him, “A hug is a perfect gift—one size fits all, and nobody minds if you exchange it,” and then she explained what it meant. So he decided to give her one, and she returned it, squeezing him hard, which made him feel nice.

He was glad he had a friend to help him understand, and he decided that hugs must be very powerful to do so many things. He just wished hugs could fix his body, too!

Charlie still didn’t understand why he’d cried so much when Jack said he wanted Charlie to call him dad. He had never felt happier to hear him say that, so why did his eyes continue to leak so badly? His nose started to cry, and he even got what Cassie’s mom called the hiccups. After Cassie told him about hugs, he liked them even more than ever, and he realised how lucky he was. He was able to get lots of hugs from their dad, but the first Charlie couldn’t because he died, so he didn’t have a body and that made him feel sad.

When his dad said he wouldn’t make him live with a Tok’ra inside him to make his body work if Charlie didn’t want to, he was so happy about going on this trip. His dad said they could go and stay together at his special cabin where he used to go with the first Charlie. He knew that if he didn’t go with the Tok’ra, his body would wear out soon, but he didn’t care because he just wanted to stay with his dad for as long as he lived.

The trip from the SGC to the cabin had been so cool. First, they rode in a big machine called a truck that went fast, and he saw some of the things Cassie showed him in the books. Daniel taught him a game called Punch Buggy, which was weird but cool. He was good at finding all the yellow car things that were like smaller trucks. Charlie found a lot more yellow cars than Dad or even Daniel did. His dad said that he had won the game. Charlie had never won a game before.

Going in his Dad’s truck was cool, but riding in the flying ship Dad called a helo was cool, cool, cool. They were up in the sky so high, and when he looked down at the Earth, everything on the ground was so small. He kept asking his dad what everything was, and he would tell him, a mountain, a town, a river, a lake, a train, a bridge. He didn’t know what any of those things were, so he decided to ask him later and just enjoy the sights since he guessed that this would probably be his only time flying in a helo.

After they landed near the cabin, instead of using the chair with wheels to go from the helicopter down to Dad’s cabin, they rode together on a machine with large, thick wheels that his dad said was a quad bike. He sat behind his dad, holding on tight to him, as they travelled down to the cabin, so his body didn’t get too tired. They had loaded all the things, including the food they brought with them, onto something with wheels, which his dad called a trailer, and pulled it behind them on the four-wheeled machine to save his dad from having to make a lot of trips to carry it. Cassie’s mom had made his dad bring a lot of stuff with them!

Then, after his dad showed him the cabin and unpacked their gear, he unhitched the trailer and took Charlie on a longer ride on the quad bike and showed him a big pond of water he said was a lake. He got to see animals – an eagle and a timber wolf. It had been exciting, better than just looking at pictures in a book, but it had tired him out, too.

Now, after breakfast that he couldn’t tell Cassie’s mom about, he’d hoped to go out to the lake and see the animals again today or maybe see a mountain lion that Cassie said lived in Minnesota or even a moose. She showed him pictures in a book about Minnesota, and he couldn’t wait to see what they might find today, but when he woke up this morning, it was snowing. Then, after teaching him about ice and Charlie getting so cold he was shaking, Dad helped warm him up by wrapping a warm cloth around them and hugging him by the fire.

It was the coolest feeling. Even without it making him warm, it made him feel safe and happy like he’d never felt before. He loved to listen to the thumping sound of his Dad’s heartbeat, it was cool.

Charlie was so happy he hadn’t gone with Jacob and Selmak, even if it made everyone else sad. He didn’t like it when they all looked so sad because he was so happy to be with his dad, even for a little while.

~o0o~

Jack watched Charlie sleep, and it broke his heart to see the frail and exhausted little boy needing to nap after lunch since they hadn’t exactly been over-exerting themselves. They’d been forced to stay indoors after a snowstorm had hit sometime in the middle of the night, scuttling their extensive exploratory plans that included searching out the local wildlife.

After teaching Charlie about ice and snow and why they had to stay inside during a snowstorm, they played card games for a while. Since Cassie had only just begun teaching Charlie about numbers, shapes and colours, a regular deck of cards wasn’t much use. He was very grateful that Janet had loaned them some of the games she had sought out to use with Cassandra when she first arrived after that tragically ill-fated mission to Hanka. They went there to observe the accretion disc of the black hole, only to find that the whole population, except for Cassie, had been exterminated by the Goa’uld, Nirti, along with SG-7. Poor kid had been terrified and hiding, convinced she was about to die too.

The special pack of cards consisted of shapes and common objects such as food, everyday items and animals, and he and Charlie spent a couple of hours playing Go-Fish and Memory. At first, when Cassie had begun to teach him about games, he’d been puzzled, not understanding what a game was, but now he was much more enthusiastic. He proved to have an excellent memory, which helped him consistently beat the pants off his father, who was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate.

He used to think in the long, lonely hours of sleeplessness that plagued him after Charlie shot himself with Jack’s personal firearm, that one of the worst things about losing him was that he never had a chance to say goodbye. He never had the chance to tell his boy all the things he would have said if he knew that they would never get to speak again. How he’d tell him how much he loved him, how proud he was of him, and how Charlie gave his life purpose. Jack was often given dangerous assignments, but someone had to do it. All too frequently that also equated to him being called upon to do some damned distasteful things by his superiors, as he’d once told General Hammond while defending Teal’c.

Yet when he came home to the warm embrace of Sara and Charlie, and his son hugged him tight, it helped to remind him of why he served his country and went on Black Ops. It was to keep it safe from terrorists who would have no compunction in killing innocent civilians. Being at home with them helped him cope with the memories he wished he could forget, but never would. Some Special Forces applied or were recruited because they lacked empathy or had sociopathic traits, but Jack knew many were also just regular, decent individuals, trying to protect their fellow citizens and trusting that their superiors knew what they were doing.

Charlie dying the way he had, well, he never had a chance to tell his boy, and Sara, they had been his whole world. Without him, the negative emotions that were part and parcel of his job, combined with his guilt at being the cause of his son’s death, were more pain and grief than he could bear. Hence the monumental fuckup he’d made by running away from his marriage, feeling he didn’t deserve any comfort from being with Sara. He’d been too lost in his selfish guilt to see that she deserved his support, and in punishing himself, he punished her too. It took the alien entity from The Unity on the crystal planet to show him just how selfish and stupid he had been in abandoning her,

Now, as he watched his second son sleep, knowing he was going to die, and knowing it would be merely a matter of days, a week or two at most, Jack O’Neill acknowledged that knowing Charlie was dying didn’t make it any easier. It still hurt just as much as the first time, even though every time Charlie closed his eyes (and fearing it might just be the last time), he told the little boy how much he loved him. He also told him he loved spending time with him, getting to know him, and just how proud and grateful he was for everything he’d done, saving the lives of all the people on Earth by warning them about the Reetou Rebels.

Yeah, it still sucked as badly as the first time. He felt so helpless. Jack was used to responding proactively and protecting those who were powerless, yet there was nothing…nothing he could do. Nothing, except second-guess his decision to reject the Tok’ra’s offer to blend with Charlie, even if that wasn’t what Charlie wanted. He could do nothing but question his decision not to give Sara a chance to get to know their second son, even if that chance might be just a few days. He wondered if he could have tried harder to convince the Tok’ra to let him go with Charlie or find a symbiote willing to live here on Earth, acting as a liaison between their two races. After all, the Tok’ra expected Jacob to cast away his life on Earth and go on what amounted to potential suicide missions, just because they saved his life.

This reminded him that if the Tok’ra couldn’t see why he felt it was inappropriate to send a small child off alone with them to take a symbiote, even if it was to save his life, it was pretty damn telling. What would even stop the Tok’ra High Council, after the blending and when Charlie was healed, from sending him and his symbiote out on dangerous missions?

What if they decided that they had to eradicate the Reetou Rebels before taking on further sabotage of the Goa’uld System Lords, feeling (and not without justification, since Tok’ra numbers were reputed to be small) that they didn’t have the resources to be fighting on two fronts? Sure, the SCG scientists planned to reverse-engineer the T.E.R. weapons and then mass-produce them on Earth to share with the Tok’ra. The limited numbers they’d stolen from the Goa’uld were hardly adequate, except for minor skirmishes like when the cell of four Reetou terrorists infiltrated the SCG. Hopefully, if…when they did figure out how to reproduce the technology, the geeks would also adopt Jack’s recommendation to modify their regular infrared nighttime goggles, which were standard equipment they took on every mission, so they could detect the Reetou. But it would all take time.

What if the High Council decided not to wait and had reckoned that they could utilise Charlie’s genetically manipulated ability to detect the Reetou, invisible to the normal human eye, to their tactical advantage? He could have been pressed into service on the front lines of any incursion on Retalia, and the thought of such a scenario involving a young child, even one that wasn’t his own flesh and blood, turned Jack’s stomach.

Deciding that all this second-guessing was getting him nowhere, he rose from the chair in the smaller bedroom to go out and start preparing another snack cum meal for Charlie when he woke up.

If he woke up, the traitorous thought invaded his thoughts, and Jack briefly regretted turning down Janet’s offer of support. Having her and Cassie around would have made it much harder to get to know his son properly, and their time together was so short. Though he sure could have done with having someone to kick his ass when he let his thoughts get too out of control and the petite captain was an ace at kicking his ass!

As he left the bedroom and headed towards the kitchen area in the open-plan living area, his eyes alighted on the satellite phone on the kitchen table, thinking of the call from Janet, checking up on them before Charlie’s nap. She had Cassie with her when she rang, and the kids had chatted for a bit, Charlie telling her about the helo flight and their trip to the lake on the quad bike Carter had organised. Despite her reservations about the Tok’ra symbiote plan being rejected, she had been great, organising a means of transport so they wouldn’t be cabin-bound and could explore, as without the quad bike, Charlie wasn’t up to hiking anywhere. Plus, he excitedly told Cassie everything about their inside day, due to the snowstorm. Including what they had for breakfast.

Jack had no idea if Janet was listening to the kids’ conversation or was busy dealing with infirmary matters, but even if she hadn’t heard about them eating Foot Loops for breakfast, Cassie could still innocently mention it to Fraiser. If so, the CMO would in all likelihood roast his ass. After the call, when he plaintively asked his son why he told Cassie about what they ate for breakfast when he asked him not to, the small boy got a suitably pained expression on his sallow face, that reminded him so much of his first son it was spooky. Bemused, his response reminded O’Neill how out of practice he was at dealing with a young child’s unique and often literal way of thinking.

“No, you didn’t, Dad,” Charlie countered. “You said not to tell Cassie’s mom. I didn’t tell her; I told Cassie.”

It was obvious to Jack that he needed to be much more specific with any instructions he issued from this point on. It was too late to be crying over spilled milk or Froot Loops, so he started getting some mini chicken meatballs and salad ready for dinner. He figured he’d have to keep his fingers crossed that Janet wouldn’t find out. Unfortunately, he reckoned his chances were slim to none!

Notes:

The final scene in the next chapter contains the POV of Rodney McKay, so consider this a warning. If you are a massive fan of that character in Stargate Atlantis, then you might want to skip the final scene as the McKay you’ll get is the pre-retconned McKay we first see in Stargate SG1, Season 5, Episode 14 (48 Hours), and then in two further episodes in Season 6, Episodes 1 & 2 (Redemption). Dr McKay was an antagonist in the SG1 series, but was retconned when they needed a character like Samantha Carter for their new franchise, Stargate Atlantis, who could competently deliver pages of scientific exposition. Rather than writing a new character or here’s an oldie but a goodie, making him Rodney’s twin brother who was not like SG1’s Rodney, or even having a Rodney from an alternate reality, because they would never do that, right? (Oh wait, my bad…they did do that in an episode called Dr McKay and Mrs Miller). Instead, they chose to take the lazy way out and retconned him. I loathe when TPTB retcon characters and think we don’t notice or don’t care. I noticed! I care!

So, last warning, this is pre-retconned McKay but canon compliant to SG1.

 

Chapter 9: In Union There is Strength

When was ever honey made with one bee in a hive? ~ Thomas Hood

Janet Fraiser stopped by General Hammond’s office with Daniel in tow to update them regarding her morning call to Colonel O’Neill. She figured Daniel would pass on the news to Sam and Teal’c. She fretted, wishing Jack had agreed to let her go with them to Minnesota, although she understood his need to bond with the little boy in privacy, just the two of them. She frowned a little, thinking that had she been there, Jack would not be feeding Charlie sugary junk food, but she also reluctantly conceded that eating Froot Loops for breakfast would not impact the inevitable outcome of Charlie’s organ failure.

Still, she had a reputation to maintain as the SGC’s chief medical officer and would kick his ass. The colonel referred to her as a Napoleonic power monger, although at least he had the guts to do it to her face and not behind her back, so she wore it as a badge of honour. Janet suspected that she had attracted some other monikers equally unflattering, if not much worse, since as the CMO, she was able to overrule even the General on medical matters…and when necessary, she did. The time when they believed Daniel died and his teammates were all traumatised sprang to mind. The general wanted to put them straight back into rotation, and she overruled him, insisting they needed time off to process the situation.

While she explained to General Hammond and Daniel that they’d gone exploring on the quad bike yesterday, the SCG off-world warning klaxon went off. The trio trooped out to the control room, feeling the usual trepidation when there were no scheduled arrivals or call-ins from off-world teams.

Before the General had a chance to ask for a sitrep, the gate technician reported tersely, “Receiving the IDC code from the Tok’ra, General”

Hammond checked the embarkation room below, noting that security personnel were all present and directing their firepower to the Stargate, before giving the order, “Open the iris, Sgt Davies.”

As the titanium iris retracted, it wasn’t just the security personnel with the weapons trained on the Stargate where the wormhole from the other side had been engaged who were on alert. Everyone in the gate room, including Teal’c, who appeared like a ghostly wraith when the alarm sounded, was waiting with bated breath, their attention riveted on the huge metal ring known as the Stargate, to see who would come through. It didn’t matter how many times they went through this sequence, even when it was a scheduled return of one of their own SGC teams; there was always a possibility that it could be an unfriendly, trying to infiltrate the base. While individual IDC codes were a vital security precaution, it was also conceivable that the user had been coerced into opening the gate against their will.

When General Carter emerged from the stargate wormhole, accompanied by two other Tok’ra and didn’t seem to be under duress, the gate room occupants all breathed easier. Well, that was what typically happened, Janet conceded wryly, except in this instance, one of the Tok’ra was female, and everyone in the gate room or the embarkation room who possessed testes seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. Even Teal’c, Daniel, and General Hammond looked gobsmacked in a manner that seemed disturbingly familiar to Janet. It reminded her of a foothold situation when that Goa’uld bitch, Hathor took over the SCG with a pheromone-based mind control substance, affecting every male, except Teal’c because his larva Goa’uld protected him. Except this time, she didn’t think it was pheromone mind control that was causing their dopey behaviour, more like their libidos as a tall female with perfectly sculpted facial features strode down the ramp of the Stargate with an attitude that belonged on the catwalk of a Victoria’s Secret fashion show.

She was tall and rangy like most models; her haughtiness was worn like a second skin, or so it seemed to Janet. Not just the CMO; Sergeant Jamilla Davies (the female gate room technician) and the two female security personnel on duty seemed to agree. Well, if rolling their eyes at their male counterparts’ dazed affect was any guide to what they were thinking, Janet decided cynically. Assessing the short leather-like outfit the attractive Tok’ra wore, which clung to her form like a skin, Janet could not help comparing it to the getup worn by the alien love interests of Captain James T. Kirk (the fictional misogynistic Lothario on Star Trek), whom he bedded on the Sci-Fi television show. Noting the blown pupils and lip-licking, she rather suspected many of her male colleagues were guilty of having erotic and libidinous fantasies right now as the female Tok’ra strode down the ramp after her two male compatriots.

Looking at how Sam’s dad, General Carter and the other unnamed male Tok’ra were clothed, the contrast couldn’t be more obvious. They looked like refugees rocking a futuristic spin on clothing worn by less advanced planets, such as the Abydonians, with their usual weird mishmash of loose, homespun cloth and leather from who could guess what creatures. The differences to the Tok’ra female, whose attire would not be out of place in a BDSM club, couldn’t be starker. It also didn’t escape Janet’s notice that other female Tok’ra operatives who had visited (oftentimes not even granted the courtesy of an introduction) had, up until now, always worn the same taupe and brown coloured pseudo uniforms as the males.

It seemed blatantly apparent, though, that the female Tok’ra, whose legs looked like they went on almost to her armpits (or so it seemed to the small-statured doctor who may have been a little envious of her height), had eschewed wearing their usual uniform. Clearly, this Tok’ra preferred her own highly provocative attire, even if the maker seemed to have run out of animal skin while they were fashioning it, Janet thought, cattily. Not that the male portion of the SCG appeared to be complaining about how much cleavage or thigh she showed, though. For the record…it was a lot!

Janet had sometimes heard individuals described as sex-on-legs, but until she saw this Tok’ra, she always thought it was hyperbole. Now, she was rethinking her previous assumption. The haughty woman seemed fully aware of the effect she was having on the guys and at least one of the female security staff, who suddenly wasn’t doing a good job regarding the whole don’t ask, don’t tell edict and probably should be a little bit more discreet. She smirked, and Jacob Carter, amused by the stir she had caused but seemingly immune to her charms, introduced her.

“General Hammond, this is Anise and her host, Freya.”

“Show me to the sarcophagus, so we can start immediately. We understand that time is critical,” Anise ordered imperiously, not waiting until the introductions were complete.

The General, Daniel, and Teal’c all visibly recoiled at her abruptness. Suddenly, the haughty conduct of the Tok’ra was swiftly replaced by a softer, more deferential expression.

“Please excuse Anise, General Hammond, she does not mean to cause offence. She is merely eager to get started. I am Freya, I hope that we will be able to help your scientists get Hathor’s sarcophagus working again.”

Janet observed that Freya’s more civil attitude seemed to markedly defuse the hostile reaction of the three males. The CMO couldn’t help wondering how much time Freya spent putting out fires that Anise started with her insolent attitude, and frankly, she didn’t envy her if that was the case. She also couldn’t help wondering whose choice it was to wear attire (which she mentally labelled as ‘slutty dominatrix’) that had hetero males and at least one gal’s heart pumping, aside from other more obvious body parts and robbing their brains of ability to work effectively.

“When we have time, hopefully after we succeed in getting the sarcophagus functional once more, I would very much like to learn how it came to be in Earth’s possession,” Freya mentioned courteously, smiling in a friendly, non-sexual way.

Daniel, who had seemed preoccupied, if not downright depressed, since they’d returned from Shyla’s world with the crystals from the destroyed sarcophagus that once belonged to Seti and brought back to the SCG, hoping to cannibalise both sarcophagi to help create a new one, brightened up perceptively. She wasn’t sure if it was the dire need to get a sarcophagus working or something else triggered by his return to Enterra, so Janet was happy to see a spark of life in him.

He nodded enthusiastically. “I’d be happy to explain how we came into possession of it,” he grinned, boyishly.

Janet knew he wasn’t flirting with Freya, or was it Anise? It was just his typical eagerness when it came down to archaeology, ancient history and culture or linguistics. He could talk your ear off for hours, she thought fondly, since she considered him a friend.

“We should get started immediately,” Anise announced brusquely, with a frown.

Janet couldn’t help giving a slight shudder, wondering if she was the only one who found it a bit creepy, the marked contrast in personality between the host and symbiote. Jacob and Selmak were far less obvious in contrast. What if she hadn’t raised her very real concerns about sending Charlie off to get healed by a symbiote? He could have ended up with someone like Anise, which would have been a disaster for the young boy, even if the symbiote saved his life.

Janet also wondered with a smirk how Anise/Freya would handle working with Sam and the other guy, Rodney McKay. The captain was already tearing her hair out over how arrogant he was acting and as many scientists had ego’s the size of Texas, for her to be that pissed off, he must be a real piece of work. According to Sam, who had rung Janet to vent about him, he’d already had the gall to call her a blonde, airheaded Barbie doll, making no secret of the fact he considered her very much his intellectual inferior. Fraiser almost wished she could be a fly on the wall when he and Anise tried to work together. If the Tok’ra scientist was even half as egotistical as McKay was, then things would get explosive pretty damn fast, particularly if he treated her as a Barbie doll.

As Sam had put it once, just because her reproductive organs were on the inside instead of the outside, didn’t mean Sam or Anise couldn’t handle whatever Dr McKay could. Given Sam’s combat skills and the fact that the Tok’ra and, therefore, their hosts were insurgents and infiltrators, it didn’t seem all that fanciful to imagine that they would wipe the floor with the reputedly self-enamoured scientist if things got physical. Was it wrong to hope they handed him his ass on a plate? Maybe, since they were all trying to achieve the same thing, but still, she hoped they took him down a peg or three. Janet had encountered others of his ilk too many times in her career to be amused by their blatant misogyny.

Speaking of reproductive organs, she supposed they technically belonged to the host, Freya didn’t they? As she understood it, the Tok’ra symbiotes (and their Goa’uld cousins) were genderless. But still, even Freya who seemed much less arrogant than Anise, probably wouldn’t take kindly to being patronised by the likes of an insecure misogynist with a small penis who believed he was the smartest person in the room. If the stakes hadn’t been so damn serious, Janet might have been tempted to wrangle a first-row seat to the coming fireworks and bring lots of popcorn or offer to help kick his ass.

As it was, the doctor just prayed the three scientists managed to remember how high the stakes were and work as a team.

~o0o~

Twenty hours later, Samantha Carter was on the point of wanting to throttle Rodney with her bare hands. His lecherous and chauvinistic attitude had been difficult enough to ignore when it was just levelled at her…well, not just her, several other female scientists too, especially Dr Miko Kusanagi. However, since the arrival of Anise and Freya in their outlandish outfit, it had been much, much worse. Sam swore she could smell the testosterone levels in the top-secret lab where they were working at Area 51 markedly increase. Not that everything at their Nevada-based research facility wasn’t classified as top secret already, but the tech from the SGC was so classified that anyone not cleared to know about it would have to be shot if they stumbled onto what they were doing with the sarcophagus.

Well, that’s what the Colonel would be wont to retort if he were here. A far more likely scenario was that they would disappear down a dark hole somewhere and maybe be released should the Stargate Program ever be declassified. Still, she thought Jack’s solution was a lot simpler, and she missed having him around. She reckoned he would find Rodney hard to tolerate, too. The guy sure seemed to have an ego the size of Texas.

Of course, Colonel O’Neill wasn’t here, he was in Minnesota, spending what little time Charlie had left, getting to know him. She felt for her CO, she truly did, but she was also not sure that he had made the correct call about Charlie’s life. Surely sharing his body with a Tok’ra was a far better alternative than dying, wasn’t it? Her dad didn’t seem to regret letting Selmak share his body. In some ways, he’d seemed to have received a whole new lease on life, and not just because he didn’t die as he’d expected to. Plus, if Jolinar hadn’t taken over her body without her permission, and instead she had been properly prepared for it, Sam reckoned it might have been a fascinating experience, as opposed to a traumatic and confusing one.

Yeah, so why didn’t you volunteer to be Selmak’s host then, her inner voice interrogated her. If it were Cassandra, do you think that Janet would be keen on sending her off to live with the Tok’ra and become a host? Not likely! Besides, Cassie is much older than Charlie; physically, he might be around eight years old, but the stark reality was that he’d been manufactured in a lab just a few months before, and his emotional and mental maturity was…well, who knew?

He certainly hadn’t spent any time around his own kind until a few days ago, so it was a miracle he was coping with the tragic situation as well as he was. Still, the scientist in her wasn’t sure that he was fully capable of understanding the consequences of dying, rather than becoming host to a Tok’ra choice. Even a normal kid of eight or nine would struggle to wrap their heads around the concept of death and its permanence, she concluded.

Shrugging, because at the end of the day, the Colonel had turned out to be Charlie’s father, and therefore, it was his choice to make. Sam knew he wasn’t comfortable with the whole two individuals sharing one body concept, even if he was happy that her dad survived. In part, it probably had something to do with how they’d encountered the Goa’uld first and how Daniel’s wife and her brother had been forced to become unwilling hosts, which had prejudiced his opinion by the time they ran into the Tok’ra. Anyway, the colonel had decided, with the fulsome backing of Janet, that letting an eight-year-old become a host to a matured symbiote was not something he could agree to. Plus, there was the fact that Charlie was terrified of the Tok’ra, who, to his childish brain, seemed far too much like the Goa’uld, which was the genesis for him being cloned to begin with.

Still, Sam loved kids and wanted her own someday, so it pained her to think that even now, Charlie was growing weaker and ever closer to death. It put even more pressure on the team, trying to get Hathor’s sarcophagus back up and running, knowing the life of a small child was hanging in the balance. After all, the team led by Doctor Meredith Rodney McKay had been working on this for well over a month already, and so far, they’d had failed to make much headway. Realistically, they might only have a few days left before Charlie died, and she suddenly had a thought, deciding to check with Selmak the next time she got a chance.

Of course, Sam could always ask Freya/Anise, but she shied away from the thought of engaging the Tok’ra in any non-technically related interactions, at least any more than it was necessary. Although Freya was okay, she conceded, Anise was so damn arrogant she wanted to dump a bowl of Jello over her head. Red or green coloured, obviously…not the blue Jello!

Still, maybe if she searched her memories (technically, they were pieces of Jolinar’s memory, she reminded herself), she might find the answer, but it just seemed simpler to check with Selmak. Thank goodness that the Tok’ra who blended with her father was not an arrogant jerk like Anise. If she were being honest, Sam would have to admit that she found her almost as much of an egotist as McKay.

With a sigh, Sam acknowledged that they didn’t have time for this petty posturing; McKay had already been working for more than a month on getting the sarcophagus operational, with little to no success. It was going to take the combined efforts of all three of them, or was that four of them, as Freya was no intellectual lightweight. Judging by the conversation Sam just had with her, she was Anise’s equal. Hearing footsteps coming up behind her, the Air Force captain spun around swiftly. She was not entirely sure that she trusted Freya, however, as the English poet Thomas Hood said so eloquently, “When was ever honey made with one bee in a hive?” A sentiment which was very relevant in their quest to fix Hathor’s sarcophagus asap. Still, she was relieved to see that her stalker was her dad, who came bearing coffee.

Moaning in anticipation of a forthcoming caffeine hit, Sam offered up a grateful smile. “Hey Dad, is that for me? she asked, pointing at the second mug of coffee expectantly.

Chuckling, he handed it over. “Yes, and it’s freshly made. Daniel and I swung by the commissary to get it,” he said as he studied her intently.

She nodded, not bothering to hide her grin. Daniel was a massive coffee fiend; he seemed to consume it by the bucketload. Sometimes, when Janet drew their blood on their post-mission physicals to make sure they hadn’t brought back any nasty pathogens or parasites, Sam was secretly amazed that his blood draws never yielded pitch black coffee instead of venous blood.

“Thanks, Dad. I needed this,” Sam said expressively as she took a sip after cautiously making sure it wasn’t too hot to drink.

Giving her a look of concern, he asked, “So, kiddo, are you alright? You left kinda suddenly.”

Shaking her head, she sipped more of the coffee appreciating that it didn’t have that burnt taste that meant it was made too long ago.

Finally, she shrugged. “I just needed to get some air.” Seeing her father’s sceptical expression, she caved. “Okay…I needed a few minutes away from Rodney and Anise,” she admitted.

“I don’t blame you, Sammy. That McKay guy sure can be an arrogant jackass. I thought Canadians were supposed to be much humbler than us Americans, and Anise isn’t exactly self-effacing, either. Are you sure that’s all it is? Surely you must be used to having to work with scientific geniuses who could do with a swift kick up the butt or even better, a personality transplant,” he said sympathetically.

Sniggering because she was relieved to know that her dad didn’t take to Anise either, she considered his question. Finally, she decided to confide in him…and Selmak, of course, since these days, they were a package deal. Taking another swallow of coffee, and suddenly wishing he’d brought her some blue Jello, she tried to explain.

“It’s just that I’m feeling the pressure, I guess. I’m usually pretty good under pressure to get Goa’uld technology working when we’re on missions, but somehow, this feels different. I suppose it’s because Charlie is a child and he’s so sick. I’m scared we’re not going to get Hathor’s sarcophagus operational in time to save his life. We just don’t have enough time!”

“Well, that certainly sounds like a lot of pressure, Sammy. I guess you can only do your best, but as abrasive as Anise can be, not to mention coming across as extremely arrogant, she does give you a real shot at getting it working in time,” he said, rubbing her back soothingly as he did when she was small.

“Yeah, I hope so,” she said. “Um, Dad, did you happen to notice if they had any blue Jello at the commissary?” she asked hopefully, deciding that if she had to go back and face the Tok’ra and the misogynistic Canadian scientist, coffee on its own just wasn’t going to cut it.”

He shook his head; whether it was to indicate that they didn’t have any, he didn’t notice, or because he found her childhood love of Jello outlandishly childish, she wasn’t too sure about.

Sam was happy when he gave her a teasing eye-roll and said, “I can’t believe you still eat that stuff, kiddo. But I didn’t notice.”

Seeing her disappointed expression, he suggested, “Selmak and I are going to try their beef lasagna. It looked pretty good. You should come and eat with us, but even if they do have Jello, you should eat some real food first,” he said, sounding perfectly reasonable…and paternal.

She suddenly realised she hadn’t eaten anything for hours. “Okay, I probably should grab some food, and then I’ll chase McKay and Anise off to the commissary to get something to eat, and I can get back to work.

She didn’t miss the sardonic expression on her father’s face that told Sam that he correctly interpreted her future intentions as not wholly altruistic. As she’d get a much-needed reprieve from working with them both, she didn’t mind all that much and besides, he was her dad. Of course, he could read her like a book. She was just happy he was still alive to irritate her and make her feel like a bratty teenager again.

Sam could only hope that the colonel would get the chance to know Charlie when he was a teenager. It felt like a pipe dream though.

As they headed down to the commissary to get some food…and blue Jello, her father’s Tok’ra symbiote, who had stayed quiet up until then, asked her, “Are you sure that there isn’t anything else that is troubling you, Captain Carter?

Inwardly rolling her eyes at Selmak’s formality, since she had told him several times to call her Sam, she hesitated.

“Is it Anise? Your father is right; she can be quite abrasive and has been known to annoy her fellow Tok’ra with her lack of tact,” the symbiote assured her. “I will not take offence or tell her if you wish to vent your spleen, as I believe the Tau’ri say.”

“It is a weird saying, isn’t it? I’m sure that Daniel could probably tell us where the idiom comes from,” she replied.

“I would be interested to know that, as would Jacob,” Semak said with his usual courtesy. “However, we both noticed you did not answer the question.”

She sighed long-sufferingly. It was hard to get things past her dad that she didn’t want to talk about, but now with Selmak as her father’s symbiote, it was even harder to use deflection. It wasn’t fair – there should be an etiquette handbook to stop hosts and symbiotes from ganging up against their friends and family, she decided, feeling somewhat miffed.

Capitulating, she said, “I guess I’m feeling ambivalent that Colonel O’Neill changed his mind about Charlie getting a symbiote,” she admitted. “The pressure to fix the sarcophagus, which, unless Dr Lee has better luck contacting the Nox than I did, feels crushing,” she admitted.

There was a long silence, which Sam put down to her dad and Selmak having a private internal discussion before her dad huffed. “I know it was my suggestion that Charlie receive a Tok’ra symbiote,” he said ruefully. “I didn’t truly think it through, I just looked at the small boy and didn’t want him to die,” he admitted. “Selmak had reservations, though.”

“Because of his age?” Sam asked, somewhat surprised by the revelation.

Not that her dad acted impetuously, as she could easily understand his motivation in wanting to save Charlie. He was a cute kid, and her dad was a grandfather, although he and her brother were estranged. So tragically, he never had a chance to spend time with Michael’s kids. Even when she called him in California to say that their dad was dying, her brother refused to show up, saying it would be hypocritical to turn up on the SOB’s deathbed.

Her heart ached for her dad, not getting to spend time with his grandkids. Holy Hannah, she loved Michael’s kids, and she adored being an auntie. She missed being able to see them more often ever since her brother moved his family out to the West Coast. No, what was surprising to Sam was the admission that Selmak had misgivings about the Tok’ra blending. Also, she automatically believed that Selmak had been the instigator of the suggestion to make the young boy a Tok’ra and her dad had agreed. So, Sam felt a bit shocked.

“Partly that,” Selmak acknowledged, “But also his initial fear and loathing of the Goa’uld and Jaffa, and by extension the Tok’ra…”

“But that could have been overcome. Attitudes are easily changed in young children,” she argued forcefully, not wanting to think Selmak saw it as an insurmountable impediment. Charlie was just a kid!

“Yes, that is generally true, however, attitude change is much harder for adults to achieve,” Semak countered impassively. “The truth is that the Tok’ra have an equally visceral distaste for the Reetou race.”

Sam remembered her father’s comments to the General about the Reetou being god-awful creatures who wouldn’t hesitate to attack them again, and she suddenly realised it hadn’t been just a friendly warning. It spoke to a deep-seated mistrust, even loathing, between the two races.

“Okay, but Charlie is human. He isn’t a Reetou,” she objected.

“Correct,” Selmak conceded. “But his mother was, and yes, technically she wasn’t his mother, but she did create him. Plus, it is probably her cells that were harvested to manipulate the portion of Charlie’s brain responsible for being able to see and talk to Reetou. He sees them as family, and if blended, it would be difficult for a Tok’ra to disguise, let alone change their long-held abhorrence of the Reetou, and not just the Reetou Rebels but the entire race,” Selmak explained gently.

“Once Selmak expressed how vehement their distaste for the Reetou was, I realised how a very uncomfortable blending it might have been for a child of his background,” Jacob sighed.

“So that’s why you didn’t fight harder to change the colonel’s mind?” she said, as she finally understood why they didn’t push harder.

Selmak nodded. “Yes, but also because he is the boy’s father. It was Colonel O’Neill’s decision to make, and it would be wrong to try to influence him.”

Sam nodded, regretfully realising she had exerted pressure on Jack that she probably shouldn’t have. As they approached the busy commissary, by tacit assent, their three-way conversation halted.

However, Selmak had one final comment to make. “In my opinion, making the boy live in such a situation would have been a cruel existence. I think Dr Fraiser and Colonel O’Neill made the correct decision, even if it was the most difficult one.”

Jacob, dressed in an SGC uniform (rather than his Tok’ra clothing, which certainly made a fashion statement Sam thought dryly), blending in on the Nevada base, held open the door to the commissary to let his daughter enter before him, making the penultimate comment on the fraught subject.

“And yeah, I guess it puts extra pressure on your shoulders, Sammy, but as annoying as she can be, if anyone can assist you in getting Hathor’s sarcophagus operational, she and Freya are the Tok’ra to do it,” he said calmly.

Sam, knowing that it wasn’t just Anise who was getting to her, nodded. “True, so after some dinner, I’d better get down to it,” she replied resolutely.

As they collected some lasagna (which she admitted looked and smelled delicious) and she snagged the last cup of blue Jello, she comforted herself with the knowledge that it was obvious that even though Rodney was threatened by Anise, the whole Tok’ra host and symbiote situation psyched him out even more. He didn’t seem able to deal with the rapid-fire but subtle changes between the host Freya, who seemed rather enamoured with him, (and seriously, there was no accounting for taste because she wouldn’t touch Meridith Rodney McKay with a ten-foot barge pole) and Anise who seemed equally smitten by Daniel (the poor guy).

Poor Daniel, it was like he was akin to catnip for powerful women like Shyla, Hathor and Freya, even if he was utterly clueless to his effects on females and the odd guy. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought that Dr Coombs might have a teeny tiny crush on him, and he wasn’t the only guy she’d seen with a goofy look on their face when he was around.

She was just glad that McKay had stopped trying to hit on her nonstop. Did he seriously think she would fall into bed with the class-A jerk off when he denigrated her intelligence continually? With the arrival of Anise/Freya, with their overt sexuality and apparently much more permissive attitudes to sex, he quickly lost interest in Sam, which made her ecstatic. Plus, it was mean, but Sam couldn’t help being amused by what followed. Since their first meeting, Rodney had dismissively told everyone that the archaeologist, linguist, and the SGC’s foremost sociological and cultural expert on the alien races they’d encountered, wasn’t even a scientist. However, once McKay was aware of Anise’s less-than-subtle attraction to Daniel, he suddenly became a potential obstacle to Freya’s affections.

Anytime Daniel was around the team of scientists, McKay took the opportunity to put him down, and while she was mad for her friend’s sake, Sam was relieved that he’d turned his attention onto someone else. She was already under enough pressure to get the sarcophagus functioning again with the time constraints they were facing. She was already coping with McKay’s territorial ire about her being brought onto the project. Plus, he was complaining about the shortcuts she was taking to get it operational. Sexual advances on top of that were a bridge too far!

And speaking of her teammate, just as they were getting started on their meal, he appeared in the commissary and, after getting a plate of lasagna, joined them at their table. Although to those not read in on the Jacob/ Selmak blending, it appeared to have been just Sam, sharing a table with her dad, General Carter.

“Selmak is curious about the Tau’ri phrase, to vent one’s spleen,” Jacob mentioned, as they ate. “Sam suggested he ask you.”

She smiled at her teammate as he dived in enthusiastically, to explain that its origins could be traced to beliefs dating back to Ancient Greek and Roman medicine, which had remained popular right up until the 19^th century.

“Their theory posited that there were four bodily fluids called humours consisting of: yellow bile, phlegm, blood and black bile, that control physical and mental qualities. Each of the four humours was thought to relate to a specific organ, element and temperament.

“Yellow bile was supposed to be related to anger and restlessness and linked to the element of fire. The spleen was the organ assigned to it and the choleric temperament, which even now means hot-tempered or irascible. It was believed that an overabundance of yellow bile could result in heat, fever or anger.

Sam, ever the scientist, chimed in. “Of course, as we now know, the liver produces bile, and its major role is to help digest fats in the food we eat. As for the spleen, it helps our immune response, fights germs and filters our blood.”

“As to the saying, the word vent has several meanings. The most common one is an opening that lets air, gas, or liquid pass in or out of a confined space, while the second meaning conveys the release or expression of a strong emotion, energy, etc.,” Daniel explained animatedly.

“So, in this context, to vent your spleen in reality means to release your yellow bile,” Jacob asked bemusedly.

“Well, initially, I guess,” Daniel shrugged. “Nowadays, it’s merely an exhortation to release your anger, to get it off your chest.

Finishing up her lasagna, Sam excitedly pulled her blue Jello over to her. Sam dipped her spoon into the gelatinous mass, which made a distinctively satisfying squishing-squelchy sound, and then took her first mouthful. She was peripherally aware that the discussion had turned to the other humours, vaguely registering the terms: sanguine, melancholic and phlegmatic, caught up as she was in her blue Jello-eating blissed-out haze, along with mentions of air, earth and water. Sam was too busy controlling the usually inappropriate sounds that she usually made when eating blue Jello, out of deference to her father, sitting beside her.

Taking another spoonful of Jello, for some reason, her brain flashed onto all the bureaucrats, including the Secretary of Defence, who were, to borrow Daniel’s term, exhorting them to find more deadly armaments. It was SECDEF Gerald Swift’s political pressure that was the catalyst for them travelling to the Nox homeworld to capture a winged creature called a fenri. They were hoping to study it and learn how it made itself invisible, which effectively wrecked any chance they had to create a positive impression on the Nox. This race turned out to be one of the four ancient races that had left the database at Heliopolis, which Ernest Littlefield had discovered. Those shortsighted, ignorant politicians sure did their fair share of venting hot air and noxious gases, if not liquids. Except if Colonel O’Neill was here, Sam reckoned there was a good chance that he’d probably argue very convincingly, that they also spouted off a load of verbal diarrhea, and she couldn’t help giggling.

Sobering, she wondered how the Colonel was getting on with Charlie.

~o0o~

Dr Rodney Meridith McKay was pissed off. He’d been working on that blasted golden sarcophagus of Hathor’s for almost five weeks now, trying to reverse engineer it, and the going had been painfully slow. Maybe because some damn fool had blown it up, because those military Neanderthal types got their rocks off by blowing shit up. So why would they care if setting stuff on fire made fixing it impossible?

Still, he refused to concede defeat.

As the smartest human on the planet, if not the galaxy, Rodney rejected the possibility that he couldn’t restore the sarcophagus functionality. It was just going to take time, that’s all. Just as he ignored Scientist Barbie, who insisted her the military pals didn’t bomb the shit out of the sarcophagus. She blamed it all on that hot-looking Goa’uld, Hathor. She insisted Ra’s daughter and Ra’s wife (and there was so much wrong with that he truly didn’t know where to begin), saying she’d sabotaged her own sarcophagus, but why in the heck would Hathor do that?

It didn’t make sense, but that blonde, bird-brained Carter was adamant Hathor had wanted to create a diversion to let her escape from the SGC via the Stargate, but, eh, Rodney just wasn’t buying it. No, he strongly suspected it was probably one of those GI Janes who wrecked it accidentally, trying to shoot Hathor. Because everybody knew that females weren’t as accurate with firearms as males, and doubt misfired and decided to blame it on the Goa’uld, who conveniently wasn’t there to deny it.

Now, after close to five weeks of beating his head against a brick wall, and only having a headache to show for it, suddenly, some Chair Force bigshot flyboy’s snot-nosed kid was dying, and oh no, we need the sarcophagus working again! Every damn day now, the powers that be were in his face. All…hey, McKay, you done yet? You have to get the sarcophagus working again,’ like he wasn’t doing the best he could already. As if they thought he was just sitting around on his ass, drinking coffee!

Then, just to add insult to injury, the bureaucrats sent Military Barbie cum wannabe astrophysicist from the SGC, down here to Nellis AFB to get the damn thing working ASAP. Like what was he…chopped liver or something?

Rodney couldn’t believe it when the pushy and annoying woman started throwing her weight around, acting like she oversaw his team when she was only a lowly captain in the USAF. Just who the hell did she think she was?

Of course, Rodney knew her type; they were a dime a dozen, as the Yanks said. Genetically blessed, tall, blonde and beautiful by any objective measure. Rodney was sure that any degrees she gained were earned on her back. She likely also sucked up to geniuses like himself, pretending to be in love with them so she could steal their research and pass it of as hers. No doubt she thought he’d be easy to manipulate, too. When women like her looked at him, they saw him as genius who wasn’t genetically blessed; had a receding hairline and a physique that boasted a Molson’s muscle¹, not the de rigueur ‘military six-pack abs’ testosterone fuelled simpletons in the military flaunted. So, Rodney liked a beer or two, so sue him! Eh, it was hardly surprising he wasn’t ripped; he worked seven days a week, and he didn’t have time to spend hours in the gym.

Okay, so Rodney wouldn’t refuse a dalliance with the bird-brained blondie, he was a red-blooded guy after all, but he was damned if he’d let her steal the credit for him making the sarcophagus operational. He barely took a timeout to sleep, and eating was hit or miss, mostly scoffing down power bars by the half-dozen when he was ravenous, and he consumed an unending stream of super-strong coffee to fortify himself. He eschewed wasting time, and exercising most definitely fell into that category of time-wasting.

Although there was one noteworthy and enjoyable form of physical exertion, McKay wasn’t averse to participating in. Especially if it involved GI Jane in her combat gear – that would be so hot!

McKay was the first to admit he had an abnormally high sex drive and a weakness for beautiful women like the captain. Unfortunately, in his experience, beautiful women weren’t attracted to guys like him, despite his prodigious intellect. Well, not unless they had a hidden agenda, like Military Barbie, who clearly was desperate to get the sarcophagus running to keep the SECDEF happy – she was probably banging him on the side! Fortunately, being the smartest man in the galaxy, Rodney learned a long time ago not to trust her type after getting burned when he had a luxurious head of hair.

Nowadays, he used women like for sex (great sex, lots and lots of really hot sex) and made damn sure they didn’t use him. McKay took precautions, careful that any raw data they had access to while they were sleeping with him was fake. So, when they tried to pass his work off as theirs in scientific journals, he planned to take great delight in refuting their demonstrably fake data and permanently ruining their reputations. Okay, maybe plagiarising his research was yet to happen, but it was inevitable, and he was ready for it.

Although some of his conquests accused him of being petty and vindictive, Rodney figured they got what they deserved. Besides, he never cared too much for other people’s opinions since everyone was way less intelligent than he was.

As he thought about the endless hours of work he’d put in these last five weeks on the project, McKay couldn’t help feeling contempt and exasperation for the stupid Secretary of Defence, Gerald Swift. On a good day, the guy was a real jerk and one of the ever-present blights of McKay’s life, always pressuring him to get results, like Rodney could snap his fingers and make it so. Hey, why would the Tok’ra Hottie and Barbie Girl Sam turn up right now? Working for the SGC, he was forced to give regular updates on progress. So, when the super sexy alien Tok’ra chick turned up ‘offering her help’ along with crystals that she claimed may prove useful, naturally, he was suspicious. Why did she show up now?

Rodney had his suspicions, though. His fellow Canadians had a name for folks like the Secretary of Defence, aka Gerald Swift – he was a classic goal-suck², a term first popularised in hockey. A violent and rowdy game that was a national obsession in Canada for the unthinking masses, but he despised it. However, Rodney felt the term was particularly apropos in this context since it described a player who loiters near the opposing net, hoping to score goals without doing the real work of moving the puck down the ice, yet happy to accept the accolades that others deserved by scoring the goal. Or, in this case, steal the credit for getting the sarcophagus working after those imbeciles at the SCG wrecked it!

Half the problem was that Swift was far too stupid to comprehend that every false result, every hypothesis, no matter how unlikely, that was tested and discarded, led him inexorably closer to the goalpost and the desired goal. The fool couldn’t comprehend that every negative reason still moved them one step closer to the net. It just took time to rule out every possibility until you arrived at the right one. Secretary Swift, as well as being a goal-suck, was patently stupid, an obvious believer in magical thinking like most of his ilk. He thought he could order his minions to find answers or make something that was manifestly hooped³, somehow miraculously right again by yelling orders to ‘fix it ASAP’ at his underlings.

The appearance of the incredibly aggravating Captain Carter (who had everyone in Area 51 kowtowing to her like she’d saved the goddamn world or something), and then the arrival of the Alien Hottie less than 48 hours later was significant. Rodney believed Gerald Swift was convinced that Rodney was closing in on the net and wanted to steal his goal or at least bask in the shared glory! It made perverted sense, as an alien wasn’t well-positioned to hog the glory, since the great unwashed on the planet didn’t even know they existed and The Powers That Be intended for it to stay that way. As for Samantha Carter, Captain Scientist Barbie was such a keener⁴ as his fellow countrymen would say, she’d dutifully let Swift steal the credit if he ordered her to. She was already indoctrinated into the hive mind of the military; he doubted if she’d ever disobeyed an order in her whole life.

Still, as much as it galled him to see the two female second-rate lab assistants trying to snatch the goal away from him after he’d done all the work, so they could score, he did brighten up thinking that he might get a few good scores out of it to compensate if he was forced to share credit. His libido was up for a threesome, but Rodney doubted the keener would go for it. Still, sex with a human who shared a body with a parasitic alien being…that kind of qualified for a threesome, eh?

Plus, he was picking up vibes from the alien chick that she was seriously hot for him, so he thought he’d get lucky tonight. It might even be why they sent her…Anise/Freya… whatever her name was. The Powers That Be had probably noticed that the more often he got his rocks off with the hot chicks, the more productive he was. When he was desperate for sex, and there was no one around who was attractive, he was forced to slum it with the ugly chicks because Rodney was damned if he was going to have sex by himself.

So, the Secretary of Defence sending down two blonde bombshells while irritating on the one hand, he figured were probably there to satisfy his libido so he could get the Goa’uld healing chamber operational again…in other words, pull off the impossible… yet again after the military broke it. It made more sense than the alternative that they were there to contribute intellectually; even dolts like Swift recognised that smart sexy female scientists were an oxymoron, because duh, female scientists were a contradiction in terms. Even if there were a few passably competent ones, they were merely filling in time, like his younger sister Jeanne, despite being somewhat competent, threw away her opportunities to marry a tofu-eating vegan, have a kid and stay home to raise it. As if the world needed more snotty, whiny kids!

Later, when Science-girl Barbie/GI Jane returned and ordered him and Freya/Anise to take a break and get some food, McKay grudgingly complied, irritably wondering why she thought she had authority over him. However, he went, mostly because the hot alien chick dragged him off to talk. She, or technically, Rodney supposed, it was a couple, put their cards on the table, suggesting they could Lomshar⁵ after the meal since he made it clear that he was interested in her. Rodney couldn’t deny it; he was always up for sex with attractive females, and he was drawn to the hot-looking alien.

Things were looking pretty promising until the parasitic alien revealed that it was the one who was attracted to that idiot, Daniel Jackson; however, Freya, the human host, was physically attracted to Rodney, leading them to think that perhaps they could have a threesome with the two men, and Lomshar together. That way, everyone would be happy.

Well, no way was happening. It was sick and perverted! He wasn’t attracted to guys. Even if he might be tempted to try it once, purely to satisfy his insatiable scientific curiosity, and if he did, there was no way it would ever be with that intellectual charlatan. The man was an archaeologist for Pete’s sake! Rodney despised all those faux academic types masquerading as real scientists, with their laughable doctoral degrees in soft touchy-feely sciences, expecting to be taken seriously. They were barely a step up the evolutionary ladder from witch doctors!

So, he guessed he’d have to settle for a night with GI Jane, and as dumb as she was, at least she was smokin’ hot!

His ill temper wasn’t improved when they got to the commissary to eat, only to find that patronising do-gooder Dr Jackson was already there, holding forth on some inane topic, pompously spouting off a bunch of ludicrous theories to General Carter. Worse still, the alien lab assistants dragged Rodney over to eat with them at their table (ruining his appetite), the symbiote making no bones about being enamoured with the dumb ass, making him want to puke. So okay, the symbiote and host might get lucky tonight, but it would not be with the smartest guy in the galaxy

Rodney Meredith McKay had standards!

Notes:

Molson muscle¹ – Canadian. A beer belly from drinking Molson beer, a paunch

Goal-suck² – Canadian. A sporting term (also known as a cherry picker) refers to a player who neglects their defensive duties by hanging out near their opponents’ goal, looking for easy opportunities to score.

Hooped³ – Canadian. Beyond repair; someone in a hopeless situation or tough spot.

Keener⁴ – Canadian. Sort of a mix of a know-it-all and a goody-two-shoes. It typically refers to students who are teachers’ pets or trying to be.

Lomshar⁵ – Used by Freya the human host, in s04e05, Divide and Conquer, when telling him she was attracted to him and wasn’t to Lomshar (have sex) but it isn’t explained if this is a world from Freya’s language or a Tok’ra word.

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