maddersahatter | Entries tagged with gen fic day

M is for Mirror World

By Helen Earl aka Maddersahatter

With a hasty glance over his shoulder, Daniel dodged the blast of a staff weapon and dove for the Quantum Mirror, his heart pounding. The others had made it through, he was sure. He was the last. He just hoped that this time they were returning to their own reality. He’d lost count of the alternate worlds they’d travelled to, trying to get home. He felt like Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap.

Emerging on the other side, Daniel instantly realized they were not home at all. This new mirror appeared to be mounted atop a high brick wall. He barely had time to think, Stupid place to put a Quantum Mirror, before he fell headlong to the foot of the wall, knocking himself out…

… Regaining his senses, he found himself surrounded by a hundred soldiers on horseback. A hostile force about to take him into captivity? He didn’t think so. They looked friendly. Even concerned.

“Looks like Jack’s sent in the cavalry,” muttered Daniel groggily.

“Actually, I sent them,” a familiar voice informed him.

“Jacob?” Daniel struggled to focus. It seemed that in this reality, Jacob Carter was in charge of a regiment of very old-fashioned looking horsemen. Jacob himself was dressed all in dazzling white, and had a crown on his head.

“I had hoped we could help,” Jacob told him, his voice melancholy. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. Your body is just too badly broken.”

“I uh, I’m dying.” It was a statement rather than a question. Daniel was surprised, given the prognosis, that he felt neither pain nor panic. He guessed that after all this time death was becoming pretty routine. He only hated that it was such a senseless waste of a death.

He felt himself fading into blackness, followed swiftly by a blinding light. Then a sensation of weightlessness, of rising upward. He was ascending again. Yes, as he looked down, he was sure he could see Oma Desala. She was dressed head to foot in red, and was running swiftly across the vast landscape, which took the form of square fields mown alternately in different directions to resemble a chess board.

Scanning the countryside from his elevated viewpoint, he could see all his friends and colleagues, not to mention a few enemies too. Yet they were all but unrecognisable in their garb and manner. This was a strange reality indeed.

On the other side of the wall, behind him, stood Teal’c and George Hammond, who wore strange school uniforms with peaked caps, that appeared to be two sizes too small. Nothing like the proper SG attire at all. They seemed to be arguing with each other, while a black crow flew around over their heads. Nearby, just visible as he lay under a tree, Jonas Quinn was snoring loudly. He was dressed in the same shade of red as Oma, and, like Jacob, he had a crown on his head. So too did Oma, now he looked again. Curious.

Further behind, the fields gave way to coastline. On the beach Sgts Walter Harriman - sporting a walrus moustache that really didn’t suit him - and Siler were sitting eating oysters, which Siler was breaking open with his chisel, seemingly without a care in the world.

There was a brook near the wall, and next to it was a small shop. Why would anyone put a shop out in the middle of the countryside like that? Standing outside it was Sam Carter, dressed in a white bobbly woollen outfit. She was shouting at Cassie, who was struggling to control a small rowboat. Cassie was wearing a pale blue dress with a white apron, which made her look far younger than she was.

Looking forward again, to ‘his’ side of the wall, Martouf had appeared, and was speaking earnestly with Jacob, pointing a short distance to his left. Following his gesture, Daniel could see Nirrti locked in battle with Anise of the Tok’ra, who was defending herself with a long crystal shard shaped like a Unicorn’s horn.

Daniel blinked and, in the time it took him to do so, he realised that Cassie was now at the edge of the forest some way beyond the fighting. She was in Ba’al’s red-robed clutches, struggling to free herself. Daniel tried to come to her aid, but his ascended powers had not engaged yet. To his relief, Jack appeared, riding a horse as white as his armour. He fell off, but in doing so knocked Ba’al over so that he released his hold on Cassie. Running away, she collided with Oma and started shaking her, as if insisting she do something.

At this point, Jonas woke up from his snooze under the tree, and simultaneously Daniel’s vision blurred. He felt himself falling again, plummeting toward the ground…

…And he awoke with a start.

He was in the SGC infirmary, surrounded by his friends looking down at him with concern. Janet Fraiser was taking his pulse.
“He seems to be calming down now,” she announced, relieved.

“You had us worried there,” Jack informed him. “You took quite a fall on that last world. We had to carry you through the Mirror to get you home.”

“We’re home? Home-home?” Daniel asked hopefully.

“Yeah, where did you think we were?”

“We were in an alternate reality, and you were all there but…”

He frowned, as if working out some puzzle.

“Oh my God! I think I must have been dreaming. Jack, you were the White Knight, and Sam, you were the White Queen, and Teal’c – uh, Teal’c and Hammond were Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee and…. Cassie was Alice! I dreamed we’d all gone Through the Looking Glass.”

“And who were you then, Dr Jackson?” Fraiser asked.

Jack looked at Sam and they both broke out into identical grins.

“Let me guess,” Jack offered. “You were Humpty Dumpty.”

“Well, I suppose it was only logical, seeing that he gives Alice lessons in semantics and portmanteau words.” Daniel reasoned. “And I’m a linguist.”

Jack patted Daniel’s arm. “Yeah, sure thing, Daniel, that’s why you’re a natural fit for an egg-head who falls off a wall!”

Y is for Yoke, by Madders_Ahatter (PG)

Summary: Jack and Daniel are enslaved by aliens, but to what purpose?

Word count: 1,220 words

Characters: Jack O’Neill, Daniel Jackson

Era: Season 5

Categories: Team, tough times, humor

Author's notes: Post ‘Beast of Burden’; Dedicated to @KT_Starkiller with grateful thanks for ticket 80 allowing me to meet RDA

“These guys are a pain in the neck,” grumbled O’Neill.

“So. Not. Funny.” Daniel grimaced. He’d have given Jack a filthy look, but his friend couldn’t turn his head far enough to see it. The heavy leather collars kept them looking more or less straight ahead, while the thick wooden beam the collars were mounted on meant they couldn’t move closer or further apart. They felt like a couple of Shire Horses.

“Haven’t they heard of the Unas?” Jack wanted to know. “Your pal Chaka could do this on his own without breaking a sweat.” Jack raised an aching arm and wiped perspiration from his eyes so he could see a little of where he was going. He’d have given a king’s ransom for his baseball cap to give his eyes a bit of shade. Daniel had more than once commented that he felt the same about his confiscated boonie hat.

“You’ll get no argument from me,” countered Daniel, “but they’ve got the whips, so keep pulling, okay.”

“Hey, I’m pulling. You’re the one lagging behind.”

“My legs are shorter,” Daniel complained petulantly.

“Yeh, you’d think they’d match slaves by stride. They’d get these logs shifted much faster if they were pulled in a straight line.”

Daniel hadn’t really thought about that before. He’d been too busy helping Jack haul the giant tree-trunk that was chained at each end to the weighty double yoke he and his commanding officer/friend were locked into. Now he did think about it, he glanced at the other two pairs of captives who were similarly occupied up ahead and to either side of them, just at the edge of their limited field of vision. Both were equally ill-matched, one with long legs, the other noticeably shorter. It had to be deliberate, but why?

The sharp crack of leather brought his mind back into focus. It had missed his bare back by centimeters. Wearily, Daniel trudged on, struggling to keep pace with a similarly topless Jack.

“Do ya get the feeling we’re getting nowhere slowly?” Jack asked after another half hour of toil.

“I’ve had that feeling since mid-morning,” Daniel gave back. He had only the merciless alien sun that had been beating down on them for hours to help him keep track of time, but from its passage across the cloudless sky he was pretty sure they’d been at this futile exercise since soon after dawn and it was now somewhere well after noon. Of course, he couldn’t be sure how many hours made a day on this backwoods planet. From the burning in his muscles and the sting of sunburn on his exposed flesh, not to mention the dehydration, it felt like they’d been at it non-stop for a week. He was so far beyond tired he’d forgotten how good it felt. In fact, they’d left exhausted behind a long time ago.

Daniel stumbled, and - not for the first time - the whip caught him sharply between the shoulder-blades as Jack reached over and yanked him back to his feet.

“Argh!” Daniel’s cry of pain was echoed by a grunt from Jack as the disturbance to their equilibrium caused the yoke to chafe his neck still further.

Both were dizzy and fighting nausea, their heads throbbing. They didn’t know how they kept putting one bare foot in front of the other. Their olive drab uniform pants were sticking to them with sweat. The only thing that kept them going was the hope that at any moment Teal’c and Carter would swoop in and rescue them. Surely they’d tracked them down by now?

Several times, they’d been sure they’d heard the hum of engines, and had strained against the dense wooden beam that lay across the back of their necks to look upwards in search of their liberators. Each time, they’d been disappointed to learn that the sound was just a swarm of the enormous bees this planet spawned. So far, they’d been fortunate to escape being stung.

The strain on their thighs and calves suggested that they were moving slightly uphill. Though it made each meter of progress harder to achieve, they were curiously grateful not to be going downhill. Both were acutely aware that with gravity in its favor, the slightest pause would have brought the full weight of the log rolling down to knock them both off their feet like nine-pins.

Ten minutes later it was Jack’s turn to falter, earning him a stripe across his back from the alien’s whip. He almost pulled Daniel down with him, but somehow they managed to regain their footing.

“You okay?” Daniel asked huskily, frowning with concern.

“Damn knee’s giving out on me,” confessed Jack through gritted teeth. He knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer, but no way was he going to let Daniel get beaten for his weakness. He’d keep moving if he had to crawl on his belly.

A warning snap of the whip got them moving again.

“Hey,” Jack gestured over his shoulder since he couldn’t turn to look behind, “Union says it’s time for a coffee break.”

Daniel would have drooled at the prospect if his mouth hadn’t been so dry. “No such luck, Jack. Come on, we gotta plough on.”

“So. Not. Funny.” Jack threw his words back at him.

“Too ‘corny’ for you, huh?” Daniel kicked at the sun-dried husks beneath his feet. Jack groaned. He might have slapped Daniel’s arm in chastisement, if he’d had the energy. Still, he had to admire the kid’s attempt to keep their spirits up.

More humming from behind. Getting louder. Getting closer. Much closer. Soon the sound was deafening. They were convinced they were going to get stung this time. They cringed and tried to duck down as low as they could, hoping against hope that the swarm would pass overhead and ignore them.

As the sound reached a crescendo, they found themselves bathed in a white light. The noise changed. Rings!

Next moment, they were aboard a Ha’tak. They collapsed with relief.

A door opened and Carter called, “Got them, Teal’c. Get us out of here.”

They flinched as she shot the lock off the yoke and helped them to get out of the heavy collars.

“What kept you?” Jack complained, fighting to stand up as Teal’c banked the glider to head for home.

“Lie still,” Carter advised, but Jack ignored her. Daniel too struggled to stand, accepting her steadying hand.

They staggered forward to join the pilot in the cockpit, Jack sinking into the co-pilot’s seat while Daniel held on to the back of it. They wanted to be sure they were leaving that hell-hole far behind.

“You gotta be kidding me!” Jack exclaimed as he looked out over the huge field they’d spent so many grueling hours in.

“No wonder they wanted mismatched pairings,” Daniel observed, shaking his weary head.

“That’s what they had you doing all this time?” Carter didn’t quite manage to stifle a giggle, despite the sympathy she felt for their condition.

Far below them, the other two pairs of slaves were still working on smaller versions of the pattern they had created. Together, it almost looked like a silhouette of Mickey Mouse’s head.

“Crop circles?” Daniel pronounced incredulously. “They had us creating crop circles? Now I’ve seen everything!”

This scene is set shortly after the end of the episode Singularity in Season 1

SG-1 arrived at Janet Fraiser’s front door with Cassie, who was holding her new dog.

“What’s this then?” Janet queried, her puzzled frown soon belied by the upturned crinkle at the corners of her mouth.

“It’s the rules,” Cassie reiterated what she’d told Sam. It was strange that so many people here didn’t seem to know their own rules. “Every Earth kid has to have a dog. Jack told me.”

“Oh, well, if Colonel O’Neill said so, then I guess it must be true. You’d better bring him in.”

She stood aside and Cassie led the team into her temporary – or possibly permanent if Sam had guessed right – home.

At a gesture from Janet, the others moved to take seats in her comfortable living room, while Cassie sat on the floor playing with her new pet.

Janet pulled Jack aside. “I thought I was taking in one stray, not two,” she scolded good-naturedly.

“Hey, he’s not a stray,” Jack objected. “I picked him out from the pound myself this morning. He’s got all his certificates. He’s fit and healthy and ready to go.” Jack pulled several sheets of paper out of his waterproof jacket pocket and handed them to Janet.

“Does he have a name?” Janet wanted to know, scanning the vaccine records and the report of his neutering operation. The puppy had evidently had a slight adverse reaction to the anesthetic and been sick for a couple of days, but other than that he seemed okay.

“Ooh, good point!” Jack moved over beside Cassie and squatted down, grimacing at the creaking of his knees. “We gotta give this little feller a name.”

He addressed the whole group then, as if giving orders at a briefing session.

“It’s very important that we find the perfect name. Any ideas?”

“You sound like T S Eliot on the naming of cats,” Daniel observed with a grin.

“Oh believe me, naming dogs is way trickier,” Jack assured him, winking at Cassie and ruffling the pooch behind the ear.

“He was a gift from you, so I should call him Jack, shouldn’t I?” Cassie looked up at the Colonel for approval, and then looked back at the dog to see if it suited him.

The dog whined.

“Oh no, no, no,” Jack shook his head and his hands vigorously. “No you don’t. I’m not sharing my name with a dog, even a great little guy like this one.” He wasn’t sure whether he should be insulted or flattered, so he acted insulted, particularly by the dog’s reaction. Secretly, he was a bit flattered that he’d been Cassie’s first choice.

Sam, Daniel and Janet all laughed. Teal’c tilted his head thoughtfully.

“How about Pavlov?” Sam suggested, ever the scientist.

“Carter, you gotta be joking,” Jack told her firmly. “No way we’re gonna yell, ‘Here, Pavlov, dinnertime Pavlov,’ all up and down the street.”

“Jack has a point,” Janet smirked at how the colonel had made it clear he recognized Sam’s reference without boasting about it. The man had hidden depths.

“What breed is he?” Sam wanted to know.

“He’s a Shiba Inu, similar to a Finnish Spitz,” supplied Daniel, before Jack had a chance to reply.

“Now before you try and get clever, Daniel, no weird foreign-sounding names,” warned Jack. “We want him and Cassie to fit in round here, not raise suspicions.”

Daniel looked hurt. “I was just gonna suggest Finn, actually.”

The dog whined again.

“Nah, he doesn’t like that,” Jack declared dismissively. “Do you, boy?” he asked the dog, who tilted his head much as Teal’c had done, and panted contentedly in response to more ear rubbing.

“Perhaps he should be designated K-9 as in the creature from Dr. Who,” proposed Teal’c, who had studied popular Earth programs as part of his own induction. “Both accurate and a cultural reference to aid Cassandra with her cover story.”

“K-9 was a robot dog,” Jack objected, though the puppy had made no protest.

Janet looked round the group indulgently. They had all bonded with the young alien girl to some degree, but Jack... well, Jack had a special way with kids. He would provide a good male role model for Cassie as she grew up without a father. For now, it was obvious that Jack felt he had the biggest stake in this decision. “You asked for ideas, Jack, but you seem determined to veto everything offered. Why don’t you suggest a name? Though it should really be Cassie’s decision.”

“Yes, please, Jack,” Cassie bounced excitedly on her heels, making the dog bark. “You choose. I know nothing about suitable Earth names, and we didn’t keep pets back home on Hanka.”

The dog sat down and licked her hand.

Everyone stiffened and leant forwards slightly, opening their mouths to correct the girl on her slip.

She realized at once. “Sorry, I mean I never had a pet in Toronto. I promise I’ll remember.”

Jack looked from the dog to Cassie and back. Then he looked up at Janet.

“Okay, Janet, here’s my suggestion. We call the little guy Hanka. That way, if Cassie slips up and mentions her home planet, we got plausible denial that she was talking about the dog.”

The dog in question wagged his tail.

“There ya go; he seems to like it. Wadda you say, Cassie?”

“I like that.” Cassie threw her arms round the colonel. “Thank you, Jack. Here, Hanka!”

Hanka nuzzled in between them.

“Good boy!” Jack and Cassie said in unison.

Janet grabbed her camera from the coffee table where she’d placed it ready for Cassie’s homecoming and took the first of many ‘family photos’ for her mantelpiece.

W is for Wrestling

From S5 ep 3 Ascension:
O’Neal and Teal’c visit Carter with pizza and a movie [Star Wars] but she sends them away because Orlin is inside.
O'NEILL
So, now what?
TEAL'C
I have read of a place where humans do battle in a ring of Jell-O.
O'NEILL
Call Daniel.
[They get in O'Neill's car.]

THIS IS THE CONTINUATION OF THAT SCENE (OUTTAKE) AS IT MIGHT HAVE GONE...

TEAL’C dials Daniel’s number and presses speakerphone

O’NEILL (on phone)
Hey, Daniel, watcha doin?

DANIEL (also on phone)
Trying to finish this translation. I thought you and Teal’c had gone to Sam’s for pizza. I assumed I’d get some peace and quiet.

O’NEILL
She blew us off. Gotta hot date or.... something.

DANIEL (tilts his head and frowns in puzzlement)
Really?

O’NEILL
So she said. Go figure. Whatever. Point is we’re at a loose end and Teal’c suggested wrestling.

DANIEL
Why would I want to wrestle Teal’c? Bad enough we have to spar in training. I’ve still got the bruises from last week.

O’NEILL
No, dummy. We go watch some wrestling.

DANIEL
No thanks Jack. I really need to get this translation done. Somehow watching a couple of testosterone driven muscle-mountains beating the crap outa each other is a less than tempting alternative. Go knock yourselves out. Have fun, but don’t call with a blow-by-blow, ‘k? I need to concentrate here.

O’NEILL
Suit yourself, Danny boy. Only I don’t remember saying anything about male wrestling.
(He looks to Teal’c.) Did I mention male wrestling?

TEAL’C
Indeed you did not, O’Neill.

O’NEILL
See. Not male wrestling, Daniel. Female wrestling. Hot sexy bikini clad chicks wrestling in a huge ring full of Jell-O. Is that a tempting enough alternative for ya, bookworm?

DANIEL (struggles to put his coat on while still holding the phone to his ear)
I’m on my way. Save me some pizza. Oh, uh... Where do I meet you?