A/N: Quantum Leap/Stargate: Atlantis crossover. SGA time period is after "Phantoms" in season three and before "The Seer" in season four. It could be any time in the QL universe.

Daddy's Little Angel

Chapter One

Oh, Boy!

He was being pulled through time and space again, bright light all around. He tried to close his eyes this time to see if that would help the disorientation but it didn't. No matter what he tried dizziness made him stagger when he leaped into his next "assignment".

When his vision cleared he was looking down at white shag carpet. He saw cat images on white sneakers with pink shoelaces peeking out from under pink cords. With dread he brought his eyes slowly up to see that he was standing in front of a full-length mirror. The pink cords were accompanied by a long-sleeved pink and white turtleneck. Above that was a sweet little girl face with blue eyes surrounded by long blonde hair held back on the sides with pink barrettes. Behind him he could see an unmade child-sized canopy bed covered with stuffed animals, clothes and toys scattered all over the floor, ruffled white curtains, and cartoon characters on the walls.

His eyes focused on the image in the mirror again. "I'm a little girl! God has a very strange sense of humor." Sam Beckett told his reflection.

A distant female voice floated into the room. "Maddie, time for breakfast and daddy wants a kiss before he leaves for work."

Daddy?! Kiss?! "Oh, boy!"

* * * * *

Okay, I have to think like a little girl. So, what do little girls think about? Toys? Clothes? Ponies?

"Al, where are you?" Sam whispered as he made his way down the stairs. It looked like he would have to endure being kissed by the girl's father. He kept telling himself to be cool and smile.

At the bottom of the stairs he looked around and saw the dining room and kitchen at the back of the house. An adult male with curly brown hair and an easygoing smile appeared around the corner and scooped him up. "There's my girl. How about a good-bye kiss?" Without waiting for an answer he planted a noisy playful kiss on Sam's cheek and gave him a quick hug.

"You're squeezing me…dad."

"Sorry. Be good for your mom today. Love you!" He slipped on a brown jacket, grabbed a laptop bag and was gone.

Sam was hungry so he went to the kitchen. He remembered being small and had already made the mental adjustments for the larger scale of, well, everything. Entering the kitchen he saw a slim woman moving to and from a table where he could see a box of cereal, a carton of milk and glasses of orange juice. The woman turned and gave him a brilliant smile. "There you are. Come eat." She sat down and patted the seat next to her. "Your Uncle Mer is coming for your birthday so I want you to clean your room. After that we'll go to the park."

He stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining room just staring. The woman was blonde, blue-eyed and very pretty, especially when she smiled. Something Sam suspected she did a lot. "That's mom? Wow!"

"Maddie?"

Sam walked forward and climbed up into the chair she'd indicated. The woman poured cereal and milk into the bowl in front of him then turned to her own meal of oatmeal with strawberries and coffee. Sam eyed her coffee cup enviously and dug into the food in front of him. Ew! He thought. The milk tastes awful! He must have made a face.

"What's wrong, sweetie?"

Truth was a good thing and Sam used it now. "The milk tastes…funny."

Mom checked the carton. "It's not expired and you've always liked the soy milk before."

Soy milk? No wonder! To someone who'd grown up on a dairy farm soy milk was a crime against nature. Sam finished eating without further comment then reached for the orange juice to kill the taste. He drank the entire glass without stopping then took his dishes to the kitchen sink. When he returned to the dining room he wiped down the table where he'd been sitting and pushed his chair in. After returning the sponge to the kitchen he went back to the dining room again. Mom just stared at him as if she'd never seen her daughter act this way before. Well, maybe she hadn't. Sam's mother had trained him to clean up after himself and doing so was automatic.

The sliding door sound that always heralded the appearance of Sam's holographic observer whooshed on the far side of the table. Sam tried to keep his face expressionless when Al stepped out of the imaging chamber wearing one of his more outrageous outfits: Green leather pants, a green leather jacket with huge red polka dots, a blue and yellow striped tie and red shoes with silver and purple laces. When he emerged he was already laughing. Sam didn't need to ask why.

"Oh, Sa-am," Al sing-songed, "you are so cute! I especially like your little pink barrettes and Hello Kitty sneakers."

Sam stared thoughtfully at him a moment then said, "Mom, people who dress like they're colorblind shouldn't make fun of other people just 'cuz they're little and like the color pink, right?"

Mom's eyes went wide in surprise. She knew her daughter was smart but had no idea she even knew about colorblindness. "Yes, sweetie, that's right. Uh, do you know what being colorblind means?"

"Of course. It's when someone can't see the differences between some of the colors that others can see. It's mostly genetic, but can also happen because of eye, nerve, or brain injury, or due to contact with some chemicals. The most common are red-green hereditary photoreceptor disorders that are genetic." Sam beamed. "I'll go brush my teeth now, okay?"

Mom stared at him in shock. "Uh, a-a-and clean your room or we won't be going to the park." She stood and took her own breakfast dishes to the kitchen.

"Whoa! I'd love to have her 'mother' me. She has got an almost perfect…" Al had his hands out in a familiar gesture.

"Al!" Sam whispered through gritted teeth.

"Smile. I was gonna say smile."

"Sure you were. Upstairs. Now!"

*****

Sam brushed his teeth then went back into the bedroom he'd appeared in. Al was already there. Sam began picking up the toys and clothes strewn around the room while he waited for Al to get to the point. Unfortunately, he seemed content to just watch Sam, in the guise of a little blonde girl, as he cleaned the room. It wasn't a weird kind of watching, just annoying. Finally, Sam had had enough silence. "What?"

Al gave him a slightly nauseous look. "Well, it's just so hard to take you seriously when you look like you're four years old. I feel like we should be talking about cartoons and dolls not saving someone's life or…whatever."

"Well, I won't leap until we fix whatever went wrong so…get over it!" He was standing, hands on hips and tapping one foot. "Well? Who am I and why am I here?"

The brightly colored device in Al's hand beeped and squealed as he tapped the buttons. "Mmm-mm, we know who you are, uh, who you're supposed to be, but Ziggy's not sure yet why you're here…" he waved a hand at Sam to indicate his current state, "…in this particular, um, body." He consulted the handlink. "It's 2007. Your name is Madison Miller, age four but your birthday is in a few days. You are the only child of Kaleb and Jeannie Miller. Kaleb teaches AP Literature and Composition at a local community college. Jeannie is a stay-at-home mom who dropped out of graduate school to get married. She was on the fast-track to a high-profile career in theoretical physics, quantum mechanics…cos-cosme-cosmetology?" He hit a few buttons and the device squealed again.

"I think you mean cosmology, Al." Sam told him as he lifted the lid on a toy box and dropped a bright purple bean bag animal inside.

"Huh? Oh, right. Cosmology and, well, other stuff like that, then she meets Kaleb Miller, they get married and have you, uh, Madison. Because of it, she was estranged from her only living relative, a brother, for nearly four years." He laughed. "Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay, a physicist doing top secret work for a multi-national combined military and civilian organization called the SGC. That stands for…"

"Stargate Command."

"Uh, yeah. How did you…"

"I did some consulting on the project a few years ago, relatively speaking. No pun intended." The joke fell flat when Al stared uncomprehendingly at him. "I've met McKay. He, uh, prefers to go by Rodney and who can blame him? And now I'm his niece?" Sam sighed in frustration. "So, that means I'm in Canada."

"Yeah. Sorry. Oh, that's right. You're from Indiana. That's almost like Canada, right?"

Sam gave Al a look that on an adult would have been chilling. On a small girl, it looked comical and Al coughed to cover up a laugh. "Oh, and Rodney will be here tonight. He's coming for your, uh, Madison's birthday.

"I'm gonna to go see if I can give Ziggy a kick in the hard drive to get her going on why you're here."

"Okay. Don't be a stranger." His friend waved a hand and disappeared into the rectangle of white light.

Sam finished cleaning the room and making the bed then loaded all of the dirty clothes into a white basket he found in the closet and dragged it down the stairs to the laundry room off the kitchen. When he turned around, mom was there giving him that odd look again.

He gave her another of Madison's winning smiles. "I'm ready to go to the park."

*****

Jeannie walked beside her daughter as they made their way to the park near their home. She kept giving her sidelong glances. Madison had been acting strange all morning. First there was the milk, then the recitation about colorblindness and then bringing her laundry downstairs. She wasn't sure what to make of it but she made a mental note to talk to Kaleb when he got home.

To fill in the silence Sam began to hum one of his favorite songs and Jeannie laughed. He smiled back then began to sing out loud, "To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go…" When he was himself, he knew he had a decent singing voice but his little girl voice singing the theme from "Man of La Mancha" was weird even to someone used to weirdness.

Jeannie took him by the hand, added her own voice to Sam's and they began to walk faster and faster then broke into a run, "This is my quest, to follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far…"

They hit the park at the song's climax, "To reeeeeeeeach the un-reach-a-blllllllle…staaaaaaaaar!"

Jeannie laughed with such delight that Sam couldn't help but laugh too. And when she picked him up, hugged him to her and twirled around in circles, Sam was happier than he'd been in a long time just because he'd made Madison's mother happy. For Sam, it would forever be one of his favorite sounds, the sound of a mother thoroughly enchanted with her child.

"Maddie, that was awesome! Where did you learn that song? From daddy? Uncle Mer?"

Again Sam opted for the truth. "A friend taught it to me." He thought of Al and all those nights the two of them had listened to the soundtrack from "Man of La Mancha" for inspiration while working on Project Quantum Leap and a wave of nostalgia flowed around him. The spell was broken when Jeannie put him down and challenged him to a race to the swing set.

*****

Al made his reappearance as Sam and Jeannie were walking home from the park. As a hologram, Al didn't walk so much as float alongside keeping pace. He didn't say anything when they reached the house, just nodded up the stairs.

Sam nodded back. To Jeannie he said, "It's time for my nap. I'm going to my room."

"Um, okay. I'll wake you in an hour or so."

"Thanks, mom." Inside Madison's bedroom, Sam listened at the door for a moment in case Jeannie came upstairs. "What's up, Al?"

Without preamble he said, "Kaleb Miller will be killed in a carjacking three days from now."

"When and where does it happen?"

Al consulted the handlink. "Uh, he is on his way to teach his first class of the day and about a mile from home when it happens. A couple of punks decide that their car is the perfect vehicle for joy riding in and try to take it away from him when he stops at a red light. He gives them the car but they shoot him anyway, the creepazoids." The retired Navy Admiral had an unshakable sense of justice. He not only thought that criminals should go to jail for committing crimes but that they should also go to jail for being the type of person who would commit a crime. "They use the car in an armed robbery at a bank where a hostage situation ensues. Before it's over they kill two customers, a teller and the bank manager." Al's face took on a dark and dangerous expression. "The creeps kill themselves rather than go to jail."

"Okay," Sam said thoughtfully, ticking the points off on his hand, "I'm a four year-old girl and I have to stop a carjacking, a robbery, a hostage situation and the murders of four people."

"Well, once the carjacking is stopped the rest will just…go away…maybe."

"Maybe?"

Al bobbed his head a few times. "Ziggy says there's a fifty-fifty chance that stopping the carjacking will stop everything else. But there's also a fifty-fifty chance the robbery and hostage taking will happen anyway just with different, uh, people."

Sam yawned. His body was tired and a nap sounded heavenly. He kicked off his sneakers, climbed up onto the bed and pulled a handmade blanket over himself. "Fifty-fifty? What aren't you telling me, Al?"

Al scratched his ear and reluctantly admitted, "That second fifty percent? If Kaleb is saved the different people killed in the robbery will be Jeannie and Madison."

Though the information Al had just given him was major, the body he inhabited was already shutting down. Seconds after the pronouncement, Sam had succumbed to sleep.

TBC