Prequel: Daniel’s Rib
Characters: SG-1, SGC, Paul Davis, AU Daniel (Elizabeth Jackson)
ESRB Rating: Everyone 15+
Themes: Episode Tag, Mission Down Time, Team Bonding, Angsty Reflecting, the Kitchen Sink
Season: S3
Spoilers: Point of View
Written: February 06
Elizabeth nodded a thank you to the airman who held the door for her. She was being deposed by the Pentagon this afternoon in the privacy of General Hammond’s office. It was just another thing in a long list of things she’d had to put up with these last two weeks. She supposed she couldn’t really expect anything less, being a refugee from another universe and all. The military was bound to be curious. And it wasn’t all bad. Mostly just tedious and repetitive. And boring. Talking about herself over and over again wasn’t really high on her agenda.
They were all here already, a sea of smart blue uniforms waiting for her. They all stood respectfully as she came in: General Hammond, a sharp faced man acting as stenographer, a Captain and Major who looked like JAG with their briefcases’ and legal pads of notes, and so that left the SGC’s Pentagon Liaison to be the man standing—
“Paul!” She pulled herself up short, actually stumbling back a step in surprise.
Major Paul Davis slid his glance from Dr. Jackson, Elizabeth to Major General Hammond, George. Hammond only had the briefest of head shakes for the urbane Davis. ‘You’re on your own, son,’ it told him.
Narrowing his eyes gently, Paul’s hand motioned between them. “I’m… I’m sorry. Do you know me?” It wasn’t like he wasn’t familiar with the situation, so the possibility was very real she might. He just hadn’t really expect it. At all.
“I— I…” She looked from face to face in the room, uncertainty making her lick and then hold onto her bottom lip with her teeth. These were people she knew and trusted. Except they really weren’t. It made her feel more then a little lost, and not for the first time since Daniel and the rest of SG-1 and come back through the mirror and her new way of life had begun. Everything here was the same as it had been there, except for the parts that weren’t. Which was almost everything.
“Yes, I. Of course I do. Wow. You… work at the Pentagon here? But you hate bureaucracy.” Elizabeth’s eyebrows drew together over her glasses like she couldn’t quite believe it.
“Why don’t you have a seat doctor, and you can explain it to us.” Hammond graciously waved her towards the empty chair. The stenographer had begun recording the moment she’d called Paul’s name.
Nodding, Elizabeth kept chewing the corner of her lip as she did as invited. Her blue eyes held on tight to Paul’s green, but Paul carried the weight of it, a curiosity of his own burning bright inside him.
There were things he was supposed to say, statements to be made, certain laws that had to go on record and be acknowledge that she understood before any formal or official questioning could begin. Instead, Paul asked with wonder, “How do you know me?”
“Because you’re on SG-1.”
Not just Paul’s, but the room’s eyes at large popped a little wider. Hammond flexed his fingers into the arms of his chair and turned to evaluate the Major in a whole new light.
“Colonel O’Neill, Major Ferretti, myself and… you. But,” she had to add with a pinwheel of her hand. “I only know you as Captain Davis. I’m sure you’d've made Major soon enough if….” She held onto her bottom lip again before lifting her chin. “Wow. Talk about the road less taken.”
“Yeah.” Paul could only agree with a crooked grin of his sharp mouth. But then he was tapping at his own paper work and pulling his shoulders back.
This was all beautifully bizarre and deliciously demented, but Paul had a job to do if he wanted to get any ‘real’ answers. “I’m sorry; I’m going to have to start us over again for this to be official.” Flipping to the first page, he began reading. “The Constitution of the United States of America gives each and every citizen of the world a chance to come into its boarders, the opportunity to live free of tyranny and thrive in a land of tolerance. Elizabeth Amelia Jackson, you have requested sanctuary and political asylum….”
The stenographer was taking each word down and Hammond was nodding along absently. The JAGs were simply waiting their turn to recite they’re own parts before the production could really begin. And Elizabeth was smiling.
She was smiling because Captain— Major Paul Davis wasn’t laying dead on level 20, his own field knife turned on him to pierce his heart. This was certainly something she could smile about today.
A week. She was going to be on her own - so to speak - for an entire five days.
Originally, Daniel had invited her to come with him to his congressional presentation and she’d even agreed. Elizabeth was familiar with the material after all, having compiled a version of her own. And then the idea of second chairing a grant proposal she had had to give up so many months ago in her own world do to the eminent arrival of the Goa’uld….
Things were still too fresh and too raw and he’d seemed to understand when she’d come back to him with her change of heart.
Since Daniel was going to be in D.C., that meant SG-1 was out of rotation and Hammond had given them a bit of leave. Jack had taken immediate advantage of the situation and shipped himself off to Minnesota, where the women were strong, the men good looking, the children way above average and the lakes had no fish. Jacob Carter found time from his duties as Tok’ra operative to visit his grandson in time for his fifth birthday and together with Sam they’d gone down to San Diego. And Teal’c…
Well. Teal’c was in a similar position as Elizabeth was. They didn’t have any where to go or any one to visit, and if they did want to leave base, they had to do it with a “military escort”. They were national secrets, the two of them. People who didn’t really exist outside of the gray walls of Stargate Command. So here they both were.
She decided to use her time as productively as possible, setting to rights her new office and requisitioning a few necessities. It was well and good to wander down to “Daniel’s” office for a reference book, but when you spent more time standing in front of his book case then sitting at your desk working — Ellie double checked an edition she wanted from the publisher’s website before filling the form out in triplicate for the anthropology department.
Which only made her throw her pen down in… in what. Anger? Frustration? Disappointment? Depression? It was only a little over a month ago she was department head of anthropology for the SGA. And now? Setting her elbows on her desk, she pushed her glasses up with the palms of her hands so they could grind themselves into her eyeballs. Maybe Jan– Dr. Frasier was right: maybe she needed to speak to one of the bases’ psychiatrists. Or maybe they’d just toss her back into a rubber room. Didn’t this feel a bit like that anyway?
“Elizabeth Jackson.”
For every action there is an equal and oposite reaction: Elizabeth snapped her head up so fast her glasses slid down her nose at the speed of light and clattered down onto her keyboard. It was Teal’c. He was standing in the doorway, filling it up in ways no mere mortal ever could, his hands tucked behind his back.
“Teal’c, hey. Uhm.” She was still awkward and uncomfortable around the Jaffa. It was more then abundantly clear he wasn’t “her” Teal’c, but the concept as a whole still made her jumpy. “How’re you?”
“I am well. Though… I find myself with very little to do.” He cast his eyes around the office without actually moving or tilting his head. Elizabeth quickly turned back to her boring government paper work, overly blinking her eyes at the forms in triplicate.
“Yeah, I’m just sort of… busy work, really.”
Reaching out from behind his back, Elizabeth tried to cover her flinch with a clearing of her throat as Teal’c handed her a glossy, folded brochure.
“O’Neill left this with me. He said that I would find it most entertaining and I was wondering if you would enjoy accompanying me.”
She took the pamphlet gingerly, an eyebrow cocked for the Jaffa before she actually gave the advert her attention. “Funworld Miniature Golf and Arcade?”
The neon blue golf ball was swallowed by Teal’c’s hand. “I do not understand.”
Elizabeth bounced her own neon green golf ball on the head of her golf club. It was a trick she’d once seen Tiger Woods do so she’d endeavored to master it as well. It just looked so cool and slick. “It’s not like the golf you see on television. We’re a long, long way from the PGAs. This is more like…. It’s like, there’s the firing range the Marines use as practice, and then there’s Laser Tag.”
“Laser Tag?”
She gave the golf ball an extra hard pop up, letting it fly high enough to catch in her hand. “Uhm. Yeah, maybe not the best analogy. Uh.” Darting her eyes about, she leaned in and tried again in a low voice. “Golf is to a Mother Ship as miniature golf is to a Tel’tak.”
He arced an eyebrow, a certain amount of understanding filtering in. “Indeed. And I am to putt through… that frog?”
They turned to regard the first hole. It was an overly anxious frog who wanted to “eat” your “fly” of a golf ball. Shoot it straight down his tongue, it’d bounce out the other side for a great chance of a hole-in-one. Hit any of the other holes by his feet, and your chances were far less.
“Yes.” Elizabeth couldn’t help herself; she was grinning up at the big man and, dare she admit it, enjoying herself. Sure, there was a quiet detail shadowing both of them, but shadowing was the operative word. She and “Murray” had the world to themselves. “Over there’s a pyramid, though.” She hooked her club over the course, pointing the structure out around the 10th hole.
Teal’c had another arch for his eyebrow, the gesture crawling up into his Panama Jack hat.
“Here, watch. It’s fun, I promise.” She teed the ball, giving the angle of her strike a methodical and thoughtful line up.
Ponk!
It was undershot considerably, coming up way short of the hole - any hole - to tumble down into the second stage of the first hole. So Elizabeth walked up and nudged it in with her sandal.
“Elizabeth Jackson! I do not believe that—!”
“It’s, uh. It’s a miniature golf rule. You get to kick your ball at least once per hole to… help it.”
Both eyebrows leveled at her, but she caught the twitch in his full mouth that approximated a Jaffa Grin. “I see.”
Somewhere around the 4th Hole and the Dutch pinwheel that caught your ball up and flung it at various targets, Teal’c let her know he’d just remembered: he’d read all about miniature golf in a book, and he distinctly remembered it was allowed to do the 4th Hole over and over again until you could get the most elusive target and earn the video game token it rewarded you with.
Elizabeth was pretty sure she’d read that book too.
“Why are we here again at two when she said four?” Jack was holding up the frame of Daniel’s front door while he finished getting everything he needed.
“Because when we get there at 4, she’ll have finished most of it.” Glancing at the keys in his hand in habitual double checking, Daniel pulled the door closed behind him as he stepped into the hall.
“She’ll— what? Why would she do that?”
Daniel could only sigh in restrained indulgence, shaking his head at the Colonel. “Just trust me, okay?”
Jack flashed a narrowed eyed frown, shoulders scrunching as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. As it was, he was already very much against this whole idea. Had been right from the start. Daniel and Elizabeth living in the same building was just too… too something.
But she’d be down right sassy when she’d let the whole of SG-1 and a good portion of the hallway outside Carter’s lab know that she had spent quite a few months looking for just the right place to call home and if her building was going to persist in not being exploded in this universe, well — she planned on living in it thank you all very much.
Getting a lick from Daniel’s temper — not his frustration, but his actual temper — was rare enough that when you felt it, it stung for some time. Experiencing a lick of Daniel’s temper from a woman who set her hands on her hips and cocked her head in an identical display had been down right unnerving for Colonel Jack O’Neill. He’d left Sam’s lab with a wave of his hand in the air.
It was a perfectly good Saturday afternoon and Hammond had given them the go ahead to use the weekend to get Elizabeth off base and quietly reintroduced into polite society. It wasn’t really like the woman had truck after truck of things she needed help with, but Jack could sniff a “team building exercise” when he came across one. She had some stuff, and Jack was willing to indulge both George Hammond and Daniel Jackson. For the time being. The whole… thing still gave him the willies even if he’d had ten weeks to assimilate. He did a lot of nodding and smiling and doing as he was told without thinking about it, wearing a plastic expression.
Elizabeth had told them to be there at 4pm and that she’d provide dinner for their labor. Except that Daniel had called him at noon and told him to meet him at two so they could head up early. Sam had also apparently been called into duty early, but would still be late as she had some errands to run. She’d grab Teal’c, though, which is how Jack found himself with Daniel in the elevator heading up.
The hall itself was quiet, but when they got right up to Elizabeth’s door, the muffled sound of music escaped from around its edges. If you put your hand up flush against it, solid though it was, you could feel how loud it was on the other side. Daniel had a stupid grin for Jack. Jack had a scowl for Daniel.
Jack rapped his knuckles smartly just under the brass numbers.
“She isn’t going to hear you.” Probably not, but what was he supposed to do? He knocked again.
Daniel just reached out and spun the knob, swinging the door open.
The music lurched out at the men, crashing against them in unforgiving volume. “And then worst of all — worst of all! — you never call, baby, when you say you will — say you will! I need you — you! — more then anyone, darlin’! You know that I have from the start! So build me up, Buttercup, don’t break my heart!”
Jack jerked his head back, eyes blinking rapidly at the entirely new realm of surreality he’d just found himself in on. “Is this crap you do when no one’s around?”
Daniel was grinning slyly and letting himself in. “What?” His answer was too pat, too innocent. He made a motion near his ear, ‘can’t hear you’ it lied. Jack had exactly no options available to him, so followed.
There was a couch, a coffee table, a mostly empty entertainment system, but a respectable amount of stereo equipment already in appearance. Not that it was put away. The unit itself and its two speakers simply rested on top where normally you’d find picture frames or at least a collection of movies. It was there the Foundations were singing from, but otherwise the living room was empty of both boxes or an Elizabeth Jackson.
Daniel lead the way, circling the divider to peer into the kitchen.
Bouncing around to make a bobby socker proud, Elizabeth was dancing with a plate in each hand. Presumably she was emptying the box on the counter into the cupboard just by her head. There were a few others already in there, but if her performance was any indication, this was going to be a slow and lengthy process that included much two stepping and shimming from side to side in black poplin Capri’s.
And now, now she was singing along. Elizabeth asked the plate in her right hand, “Why do you build me up, build me up! Buttercup, baby, just to let me down; mess me around!”
Daniel looked smug as he leaned his shoulder against the archway, arms folding. Jack could only watch on with an incredulous expression.
She was about to address the left plate when she caught something out of the corner of her eye that made her spin. “Wow!” Horror then made her clutch both plates to her chest.
Daniel started to laugh, a rambunctious action that made him slap his palm against his thigh. Jack continued to watch on with his incredulity.
“How long have you been standing there!?” Even as she demanded to know how long she’d been humiliating herself, Elizabeth was turning an impressive shade of plum.
“Long enough,” was all the… other linguist could squeeze out. Though, natural peace maker that he was, Daniel pushed away from the wall to take the plates from her. Not that he could stop himself laughing as he did so. She let him, her mortification completely robbing her of motor skills or coordination.
Jack was sort of waiting for the camera man to pop up from behind the breakfast bar and tell him he was on one of those candid camera shows, personally.
Elizabeth was fumbling in the breast pocket of her shirt for what turned out to be a remote. The concert was reduced to far more manageable decibels.
“You’re early.” Angry, embarrassed blue eyes turned up on Jack as if this was all his fault.
“Hey, hey — blame him, not me.” Initially he threw both hands into the air in an ‘I surrender!’, but Jack made sure to stab a finger at Daniel as the real culprit here. Daniel continued to look smug, but had gone about putting the plates away and was already unwrapping another setting.
“I said four.” She rounded on Daniel, turning to look up at him then. It gave Jack the time to escape and shuck out of his jacket.
“Yes,” Jack heard Daniel’s smooth, cultivated response. “And I knew you’d be done by then. You’re even further along then I thought you’d be.”
“I said four,” she repeated, though with a contrite element Jack knew only all too well. It was Daniel’s “I know I’ve been caught red handed in something you told me not to do but I’m going to pretend I was right in doing it anyway all along” tone of voice.
Squinting as he peered into the empty closet, Jack simply threw his jacket onto the floor in leu of hangers. Good enough, he figured. He was struck for — oh — the eighty billionth time with how… how creepy Elizabeth Jackson was.
He wanted to like the woman. He did. She had a passion, a fiery intensity that sucked you in even when you didn’t want to be. Almost more so if you didn’t want to be. There was no questioning her intelligence, it simply pooled around her when she palmed a reference book or scribbled ancient words on a chalkboard faster then should have been possible. And yet, despite all this, she somehow held on to some core element of innocence, of wonder and naivety that simply couldn’t comprehend a cynical and jaded world. Not really, not in the way he did. To her, every ending was going to be a happy one and it hurt and confused her when it simply didn’t work out that way.
And she was pretty. Not pretty in the conventional way, sure, but in a way Jack liked anyway. A woman you could actually approach. Like Sara, like Carter; Elizabeth was comfortable enough in her own skin that there wasn’t any of that usual stupid flustering women could carry around with them. These were women who could and would throw on a pair of jeans and hike around with you on a nature trail. And they’d enjoy it for what it meant to them and not what it meant to them meaning to Jack.
He enjoyed and appreciated all of these things. They were - in large part - why he enjoyed Daniel’s company so much after all, right? Exactly. And in there was Jack’s problem. Because he already had a Jackson that did all that. But now there were two, the second skipping around in a pair of Capri’s that did interesting things to Jack’s pulse rate. And that was weird and wrong and just — it was just. It made him think of other things he had very pointedly kept himself from thinking about. Just because the package was suddenly more acceptable didn’t make the line of thought any less inappropriate for a team mate.
“…already gone shopping?” Coming back from his thoughts, Jack shook his head roughly and went back around into the kitchen. Daniel was asking Elizabeth something as he handed things up to her. She was kneeling on the counter setting wine glasses two shelves above the plates.
“Yeah, this morning. I figured I’d do that roasted Italian citrus chicken.” She knew she didn’t need to explain what she meant. Daniel was nodding easily in comprehension and appreciation.
A dark scowl took up residence on Jack’s face. He was going to see about setting the stereo up properly. In the other room.
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