Because Calculus is hard and boring, and I doubt I'm going to pass the exam anyway.
"How can someone be lost?"
The question broke the peaceful silence that kept SG-1 near the fire. As the silence grew, the girl repeated her question. "How can someone be lost?"
Cameron's thoughts scrambled, the question rebounding across the walls of his skull. A look at the other members of his team showed they were also confused. Teal'c managed to answer first. "If you cannot find someone, then that person is lost."
The blue-eyed girl frowned, her eyebrows raising themselves as her brain batted the answer around. "But what if you know where the person is?"
Daniel sighed, his voice going off into tired archaeologist land. "Well, if the person doesn't know where she is, then she would be lost."
She frowned again, absentmindedly tucking her curly brown hair behind her ear. "But how could the person not know where she is?"
Daniel frowned, trying to decipher the sentence. Vala jumped in, her voice high with surprise. "If the person can't remember anything, or if there's no one around-"
The girl interrupted. "But there's always someone around."
Cameron chimed in while the others blinked in confusion, grateful for a question he could answer. "Not necessarily. See, if you're in the middle of a desert and no one is around that you can see, then you're alone, and therefore, lost."
Her frown deepened. "But what if there's a person only 50 miles away? Are you lost then?"
Vala jumped in. "If you don't know that the person is there-"
"But how could you not know?"
Daniel blinked in surprise while Vala sputtered. Even Cameron felt the beginnings of surprise. Only Teal'c seemed unaffected. "If you cannot sense the person, or if there is no sign of her presence, then would you not assume that you are, in fact, alone?"
The girl frowned deeper, her face reminding Cameron of someone who wasn't quite sure of what she tasted.
"But how could you not sense them?"
They all looked at her- Daniel braved the question. "If the person is fifty miles away-"he began. She interrupted. "But she's there- how could you not know?"
At their confused looks, she continued, her voice increasing with every pointed finger. "If Earth is there-" she pointed to a star in the sky-"and Atlantis is there-" a blank piece of sky became her bull's eyes- "and if there's a city twenty miles away over there-" she pointed to the east; Daniel sputtered. Vala exclaimed, "There's a city there?"-"how could you not know where you are?" Silence fell once more as each attempted to think of an appropriate response. Teal'c eventually broke in with a gentle tone. "None of us can know what you know, O'Neill. We cannot point to a star in the sky and know if any planet orbits it, just as none of us can know where every person in this galaxy is."
The girl became quiet, her expression contemplative. She turned to face the sky, her arms curling themselves around her knees. They watched her, the only noise coming from the chirping crickets and the crackling fire. Her face became sad, and when she turned to face them, her expression was of a person who had just realized how far gone she was.
"Am I alone?" She asked this as a child might, quietly, with some measure of hope. The question caught Cameron off guard. For a moment, he felt himself falling on the floor- a hand reached down to help pick him up as another voice apologized. The owner of the hand smiled- her blue eyes lit up her face and made her curly brown hair shine. Her voice, when she spoke, was filled with laughter. "You'd better learn how to dodge better, Uncle Cameron." The words came out in an excited humor- they did not register with their owner until she realized that the people around them were giving her odd looks. She wacked herself on the forehead, her palm barely leaving a mark. "Oh, sorry Colonel." She shook her head in a woefully humorous manner, and helped him the rest of the way up. It wasn't until later, when he was lying in bed, staring up at the dark ceiling that separated him from the sky that the words echoed in his ears. And later, when he dreamed, he saw her as she must have been- saw her and others, her siblings and "cousins,"- it was then that he admitted to himself that the protective feelings weren't just of an elder to a younger, or of a commanding officer to a lower ranked official- it was then that he acknowledged the fact that she was Sam's daughter, and therefore was more to him than just a younger officer.
He realized, then, too, that he wasn't the only protective one- that Vala distracted her from the cruelty of the world, that Daniel kept her from losing her innocence, that Teal'c taught her how to survive in this brave new world. They all protected her- and in that darkness, on the day when her memory slipped and she remembered, when she reacted as she surely must when she met him on any given day, in any given place in any given hour- it was then that he admitted how much those words, that simple honorific, meant to him, and how far he would go to protect her, Sam's child.
He blinked in the silence of her sacred question. Looking around, he saw that the same words that trembled on his lips reflected themselves in the eyes of his companions. Eventually, in the moment of silence that followed her solemn query, some minutes or hours or seconds or even years later, Teal'c answered, staring at her with a solemn passion in his eyes and his voice, the answer coming out of his chest in a rough, rumbling tone.
"You will never be alone, O'Neill."
She looked at him, and at them, staring at them with Sam's eyes and Jack's face, a curious mixture with nothing to claim for her own but curly innocence. Not understanding the solemnity of the answer, her memory a blessing and a curse, but still somehow knowing that they were serious, that she would never be alone, she nodded, her eyes portraying a solemn trust in their promise.
"Okay."
Por fin.
P.S. Disclaimer- I own a Lynx who's part mountain goat. Otherwise- I've got bobkiss.