Author: Christi (christim@comcast.net)
Disclaimer: Not mine. Don’t sue. Please. You’ll end up owing
me money, I’m that broke.
Spoilers: Anything up to Fragile
Balance is up for grabs, though if they’re there, they are small. Very
small. Happens one month after the end of that episode.
Author’s Note: I swore to myself that I wouldn’t do this. I
mean, repeatedly. And then…I made the mistake of talking about it in the Monday
night chat room. Somehow, the niggling little thought lurking in the back of my
mind from a really peculiar dream then managed to spiral into an all-consuming
force to be reckoned with. So really, if you think about it, this is all their fault—you know who you are. Don’t
try and play innocent. This is on your heads. *Hands them the blame* There,
take it. As always, thanks to Eva, because she’s wonderful.
---
I tend to live in the past
because most of my life is there.
–Herb
---
Over the course of his life, Jack O’Neill had been in a
countless number of perilous situations. He could navigate through hostile
territory without blinking, devise backup plan after backup plan if that’s what
was required, and he would complete
his mission because that was his job. So really, after all that, it was no
surprise that he had managed to conquer South Colorado Springs High School with
little more than a blink, a cocky smirk, and a really good pair of shades.
Even as a lowly sophomore, the guys feared him. The girls
worshipped him. The teachers were reluctantly but irrevocably charmed by him. Without
even trying, Jack O’Neill had become an undisputed teenage god—a fact that he
tried not to think about too hard considering his previous career.
Predictably, he was miserable.
The guys were inane. The girls were vapid. The teachers were
patronizing. He could have dealt with all that if he had to—if he could live
through and manage to cope with Ba’al and his never-ending box of death-defying
fun, he could certainly make it through high school. But he had been here a
month now, and could almost see
himself slipping into the black despair of depression, a feeling he was much too familiar with.
He didn’t want to
be in high school, damnit. He had barely tolerated it the first time, what in
the world had made him think that a second go around would make things any
better? He just wanted to be back home at the SGC, going through that insane
piece of technology that broke him into a billion pieces and put him back together
again, his friends by his side.
His friends.
God, he missed them.
Jack had always been cautious about letting people into his
life, and after Charlie died and Sara left, ‘cautious’ had morphed into downright
unwilling. Yet here he was a little over seven years later, having lived a
whole new life surrounded by three of the most mismatched friends he ever could
have imagined, feeling like he had managed to misplace his right arm because
they weren’t with him anymore.
In the face of their loss, hockey tryouts and pubescent
cheerleaders really didn’t hold much appeal.
So he coasted
through the halls with his trademark unflappability, feeling a little more numb each
day, praying that feeling would stop entirely because at least empty was better
than trying to hide this constant gnawing in his gut.
Peripherally, he was aware of the students gathered around
him, not actually having the nerve to sit as his table, but trying to get some
of his overwhelming coolness to rub off on them by positioning themselves
nearby, watching him. He couldn’t find the energy to give a damn, instead
showing undue interest in what was spread on the cafeteria tray in front of
him. The food resting there was mostly colorless and lacking any sort of
defining shape or texture other than general mush, but it didn’t really matter
because Jack had no intention of actually eating it anyway. He just pushed it
around on his plate, back and forth and back and forth, making it even more
disgusting than it had been previously, if that was possible. The grayish blob
matched his mood.
“Please tell me you weren’t actually planning on eating
that,” a feminine voice said from above him.
His entire body froze and for one terrifying moment, it felt
like he was in the freefall of his first parachute jump gone awry. It wasn’t
possible. It just….
Without his conscious permission, his eyes slid away from
the glop on his plate, making their way up the curves of the figure standing at
the other side of the table. Long legs encased in denim shorts, a simple sky
blue T-shirt, a long rope of braided sunshine hair…and smiling blue eyes. There
was a surreal moment where everything seemed to stop as her gaze locked with
his own, Jack suddenly forgetting to breathe or think or function on some basic
level.
“Because honestly, I think MREs are more edible than that mess,” she continued, a dimple
wavering in the side of her cheek as he gawked at her.
“God, Carter…” he finally
managed to gasp out, making a conscious attempt to keep his jaw from hanging open.
“What did you do?”
“That’s quite rude, Jack,” a chastising voice said as a new
figure stepped into the picture flanking Sam’s left side, tall and scrawny with
tell-tale floppy brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses. “Care to try again?”
Jack’s head couldn’t seem to wrap itself around this new
development, spinning with too many emotions to sort through. “Why?” he demanded. “Why would you do
this?”
A third figure joined their little party, covering Sam’s
right side now, and while there was no gold tattoo and the definite presence of
black fuzz that could loosely be described as hair, it was nice to see that
even as a fifteen year old, Teal’c was built like Colossus and tended to have
an inexplicable fondness for Hawaiian shirts. At least some things never changed. “We believed it to be the best course of
action, O’Neill.”
While he was still sitting there speechless, the figures
moved as one, settling into the other three seats at the table without
discussion. Carter’s hands, the ones he was used to seeing load P90s and disarm
naquada reactors, stole onto his tray and snatched the plate of mush out from
under him, wrinkling her nose as she handed it to Daniel. He threw it into the
trash with a shudder while he pushed his wayward glasses back up his nose. It seemed
that much like Teal’c had always been WWF-worthy, Daniel had always been a
geek.
Before Jack had a chance to protest, Carter handed him an
apple with a look of resolve in her eyes that he was pretty sure had nothing to
do with his choice of lunch menus. Jack could feel the anger building in him,
gathering itself for what promised to be a truly spectacular explosion. That
is, until she just held his gaze unapologetically and said softly, “We don’t
leave people behind, remember?”
His nice little bubble of righteous indignation popped
almost audibly and Jack slumped over onto the table, his forehead resting on
his folded arms. Of course they had gone and done something ridiculous like
this. Why hadn’t it occurred to him that they would? Because it really hadn’t,
not back when all this had first happened and not during any time of the month
since then had this particular scenario ever entered his mind. But, Christ,
they had followed Carter’s dad into hell,
you didn’t think they’d follow you to high
school? It was wrong; now they
were condemned to this weird-assed existence, too. This wasn’t the way things
were supposed to work—you shouldn’t be able to meet the best friends of your
life at the age of 44 and then end up with the same Alma Mater. It was just wrong that they had done this for him,
and it was easier to be angry about it than own up to the overwhelming
gratitude.
“I really don’t
like you guys right now,” he muttered.
“We figured as much,” Daniel said easily, taking out a
sandwich from a plastic baggie and munching on it.
“We also figured that would pass fairly quickly,” Sam stated
calmly, working on a bag of potato chips.
A disbelieving snort emerged from him as he sprawled half prone
across the table. Of course they had. It was so like them just to assume that
he’d get over it and accept it. Well, if they thought he was just going to make
this easy on them….
At some point, Jack realized that his fingertips were
resting against the skin of Carter’s forearm, just barely touching her. Some
part of him needed to know that she was really here. As it turned out, touching
a teenage Carter was pretty much the same as touching a full-grown Carter, a
comforting thought in itself. That was when he realized with startling clarity
that they had been right again. And
now, he had an entire lifetime of them being right to look forward to.
“Aw…crap.”
---
“Hey, how come Teal’c gets to take Remedial Pre-Algebra and
I get stuck with Pre-Calculus?”
“Teal’c has never had any kind of math before, and you used
to fly fighter jets for a living, sir.”
“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I actually want to apply
myself or whatever. And seriously, you gotta drop the sir thing. Not only is it
no longer true, it’s kinda…creepy in this setting.”
“I’ll work on it.”
“Good.”
“O’Neill.”
“Yeah, Teal’c?”
“While I understand that this ‘math’ is required of your
culture and therefore will attempt it to the best of my ability, I see no class
on my schedule that will allow me to continue to hone my battle skills in preparation
for one day rejoining the war against the Goa’uld.”
“Erm…well…they don’t really…teach…battle here, T.”
“Actually, that’s not entirely true, Jack. There’s one thing
he could try.”
“By all means, Daniel, enlighten us.”
“Well, he could always…join the football team.”
---
Practically overnight Jack’s high school existence went from
slightly ridiculous to downright surreal. Whereas before he had been
comfortable with his notoriety as some sort of unwilling teenage icon, the
presence of his team made it even more noticeable. Without conscious effort,
the team had managed to take over the institution, four unlikely misfits
amongst a sea of adolescents. They were equally revered and reviled, awed and
misunderstood, and in general, they were too wrapped up in each other to notice
much. This, of course, made them even cooler.
A loner no longer, Jack could always be found with one of
his team by his side. In his old life, this constant companionship might have
gotten real old real quick; here in
this new life it was one of the things that kept him sane. Finally, he could be
himself again, minus the attachment of a bottle of Guinness and the license to
handle dangerous explosives, both of which he fully planned on reacquiring at
some point in the future. As predicted, he soon gave up on being angry with
them. It wouldn’t change anything anyway, and even though they drove him up the
wall sometimes, he wouldn’t really want to go back to trying to live through
this without them. Besides, at least this way he had Daniel to conjugate
Spanish verbs for him, Carter to explain Calculus, and Teal’c to…be Teal’c.
Admittedly, things didn’t always go smoothly. If Teal’c’s
culture shock had been funny seven years ago when introduced to the limited
world of the SGC, his reaction now was downright hysterical. As it turned out,
trying to explain what Oprah was didn’t even hold a candle to the difficulty
they had explaining things like ‘study hall’, ‘pep rally’, and ‘homework’.
Meanwhile, Sam and Daniel were going nuts with boredom—school had, apparently,
been mind-numbing for them both the first
time around. The second time…well,
Daniel had taken up the recreational hobby of going systematically through his
history textbook and correcting the numerous mistakes in it, no matter how many
times Jack pointed out that really, you weren’t supposed to write in the textbooks. Carter was
taking a much more logical approach, doing exactly what was required of her in
school with ease and expending her excess energy on writing endless books and
papers and theories that she kept in an ever-growing three ring binder. Maybe
it was just the fact that, hormonally speaking, Jack was fifteen again, but he
honestly thought that her constantly ink-stained hands were endearing.
So really, it wasn’t any surprise that they didn’t seem to
notice their apparent popularity much. In many ways, it was a lot like being
SG-1 had been—over the years, they had become accustomed to being infamous and
awed in turn. It was, however, a surprise that it didn’t occur to Jack until at
least the second week in that their instant status had certain…advantages. Much
like having a team-only locker room or extra week of leave had been perks of
their old job, there had to be pluses to the current situation.
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Daniel said one
day at lunch while munching on a carrot stick and bemoaning the lack of good
coffee available.
Jack shrugged. “I don’t know, really. I’m just saying that,
for whatever reason, people seem to…like us. Or something. And it could prove
useful. For example, Teal’c got on to the football team three weeks after
tryouts were over.”
“Well, sure…but look at Teal’c,” Carter pointed out.
Jack shrugged. “I know. I’m just saying. This isn’t the SGC.
People here don’t adore quietly or subtly with proper military decorum.”
His point was made a week later when he decided on a whim to
join the chess team. When he walked into their meeting room, the team consisted
of three teenage boys who were actually geekier
than Daniel, aged thirty-five or fifteen.
Two weeks later, chess was the most popular new fad to hit
Surveying the cafeteria full of people attempting to play
the game, Jack smirked. “This is what
I was getting at.”
---
The air outside was cold, but it was Teal’c’s first football
game, so they dealt with it. Besides, it was a good time to ask an important
question.
“Hey, Carter?”
“Hmmm?”
“Does…he…know about you guys?”
“He?”
“You know. The other me.”
“Oh. Him. Uh…no.”
“How come?”
“…Well, we…they…whatever…didn’t think…he wouldn’t approve.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Jack, you didn’t
approve and we did it for you.”
“And him. Sort of. I came around. Why shouldn’t he?”
“It’s different.”
“How?”
“It just is.”
On the field, Teal’c took down another guy. Hard. Hard
enough that people winced.
“Jack?”
“Yes, Carter?”
“You did explain
to Teal’c that football isn’t actually
battle, right?”
“…I’m pretty sure he got the point. I think.”
“Oh, boy.”
---
Strangely, now that he wasn’t caught up in being miserable,
Jack found himself sort of enjoying his classes. Not that he’d ever admit it,
of course. But it was sort of…fun. Sure, it was stuff he had probably learned
before, but he hadn’t really paid much attention to secondary education the
first time around, preoccupied with flying and fighting because even back then,
he knew where he was supposed to be. Besides, high school was a long time ago
for him, so he honestly didn’t remember
a lot of it. So it was pretty easy to just pretend that this was the first time
around, and ignore Daniel’s indulgent smile when he actually exhibited a
moderate amount of enthusiasm for it all.
He could let Daniel get away with that sort of thing now
because for every patronizing look Space Monkey sent him, Carter granted him a
rather pleased one. So, in the end, it all balanced out. Besides, three weeks
after they arrived, Daniel discovered the wonder of books on tape, and quickly
got involved in trying to learn whatever obscure languages he didn’t already speak. This week, it was
Arabic. Which made Jack smirk, because wouldn’t Danny-boy just keel over if he
found out that Jack already knew that one?
Absently, he noted that Daniel’s pronunciation sucked.
They were all lazing about in a field behind the school,
waiting for football practice to be over. It had become routine—they couldn’t
leave Teal’c by himself quite yet, and besides, it was still warm outside and
they were accustomed to spending large amounts of time outdoors together. But
it was different now. No more semi-automatics, routine patrols, or soil
samples. Just Daniel leaning against a tree with his headphones on, muttering
after his tape, Carter stretched out on the grass with her head propped up on
her backpack, checking over their homework, and Jack, with his head resting
comfortably on Carter’s stomach of
all places, after discovering a few days ago that she didn’t mind. It had been
weird for all of thirty seconds, until they had simply stopped letting it.
Jack was so not
complaining. If he was completely honest with himself, something he had never
been very good at but had been attempting lately, he’d have to admit that in
recent years, cuddling with Sam had been a favorite fantasy. Right behind
doing…other things…with Sam. Hey, he had been an old man, and he had been alone
a long time. Some days, you came home and wanted to just…be…with someone. For him, just anyone wouldn’t do. And because it
wasn’t allowed to be her, he had stamped out the craving.
Now, it was allowed. Hell, now everything was allowed. They hadn’t talked about it, of course.
They didn’t do that, even now, though
they were working on it. Kinda. This was as far as things had gone, and he was
okay with that, too. Because with the warmth of her stomach and the early fall
sun seeping into him as he paged through Hamlet,
her eyes occasionally looking down her body towards him, he was perfectly
content.
God, he really
hoped he could blame the sappiness on his adolescent brain chemistry. Somehow,
he doubted it. But that was okay, too.
From his position against the tree, Daniel butchered a
sentence. Jack smirked.
“Stop it,” Carter chastised lightly.
He smiled. “Can’t help it. He’s making a mess of it.” He
didn’t know how she knew that he spoke Arabic in the first place, but found he
didn’t really care.
“You could always help him.”
“Nah. It’s too much fun to hear him get it wrong.”
He didn’t look, but he knew, just knew, that she was rolling her eyes at him. He didn’t care about
that either. Apparently, complacency was another symptom of…young age. He just
turned back to the Bard, and when her hand came up and ruffled through his
hair, he couldn’t stop it.
He smirked again.
---
“Whose idea was it?”
“Whose idea was what?”
“You know. The clone thing.”
“Oh. That again. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know, Carter. Maybe. So, who was it?”
She blinked and shifted her weight slightly.
“…You know, I never really got what was so great about that
play.”
“Very unsubtle change of subject, Sam. But seriously, you
don’t get Hamlet? It’s classic.”
“So people keep telling me. Literature was never my strong
suit. But I mean, it’s an entire play about a slightly whiny, indecisive type
who talks too much but rarely says
anything. His family all dies, he can’t follow some very good advice, and he
contemplates suicide and possibly goes insane. Or not. It’s all very
confusing.”
“…Huh.”
“What?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. I just…”
“What?”
“…Daniel is Hamlet.”
“…Don’t be ridicu…huh.”
They glanced at Daniel.
“Puts a whole new perspective on the thing.”
“I’d say.”
Silence. Crickets. Grunting football players.
“…Jack?”
“Sam?”
“It was me.”
“I know. Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
---
After awhile, Jack just gave up thinking about it. All it
managed to do was give him a headache, and at some point he had moved beyond
self-flagellation. It was too complicated to try and figure out. He was living
in the present, but his present was also his past, and maybe his future was in
his past, but it wasn’t really his past because it was the present and it was
different than the past…it just kept going around like that. Sam was right,
time was really all relative, and it wasn’t until now that he really began to comprehend
all the possible problems that statement covered. Somehow, he didn’t think that
Carter could manage to explain this one with fruit, either. Though maybe
someday, he’d ask her to try.
Right now, he had actually just decided to…let it be. They
had been here a month and they weren’t going anywhere and even if Jack didn’t understand
it, he accepted it now. He was 52, he was 15. It didn’t really matter anymore.
He just was, and that was what mattered.
So, eight weeks after he had left himself on the curb of
It was a good life.
So he didn’t worry so much about how it all worked or what
it all meant or even what would come next. Because there were more pressing
issues to deal with, like trying to convince them all to dress up for Halloween,
passing Friday’s chemistry test, and laughing his ass off when the homecoming
theme was announced as ‘A Walk Through The Stars’.
He’d never underappreciate a good bit of irony again.
---
“So, how about it Carter? Wanna go on ‘A Walk Through The
Stars’ with me?”
“I thought we had already done that, sir.”
Really, she had it almost
down. Just not quite.
“Sam.”
“Right. Sorry.” She wrinkled her nose. “Habit.”
“I know, I know. So…?”
“…You’re serious?”
“Well…yeah. Sure. Why not?”
“I don’t know. It just seems so…I don’t know…juvenile, I
guess.”
“Look in the mirror, Sam. We are juveniles.”
“Still. I hadn’t really thought…it would be something you’d
want to do.”
He shrugged, attempting nonchalance. “Hey, dancing to bad
music and mocking cheap decorations. And no dress blues. Could be worse.”
“Sure. I just hadn’t planned on going. But I mean, if you
really want to, I wouldn’t mind…”
“Good!” Relief. Giddiness. Sappy again. Damnit. “Besides,
I’m pretty sure you kinda have to go.”
“What? Why?”
“…Carter, you’re on
“…WHAT?!?!”