The long(?) awaited story of how Daniel met Ethan. :) This is post season ten and the movies. I'm operating under the assumption that SG-1 got back together when Sam returned from Atlantis. Enjoy!
General Landry was sitting in his office, sorting through piles of boring paperwork, when an airman from the gate room rapped on the door and poked his head in. The general looked up, relieved to have a reprieve from the paperwork, but apprehensive as the airman's arrival likely meant something was wrong in the gate room.
"What is it airman?" he asked.
"SG-8 sent a message through the gate, sir," the young man said calmly.
Calmness was a good sign at least. Often someone came rushing in babbling an urgent message that the gate was about to blow up or something, so it must not be too bad, but then again, SG-8 hadn't been scheduled to report for another few hours.
"All right airman, let's go." General Landry stood from his desk and followed him into the control room, glancing through the big window in the conference room for any signs of an impending disaster. They came down the stairs into the control room which was the same as always, except an undercurrent of uncertain amusement was felt in the way the gate technicians were shifting in their seats. The way they kept glancing at each other made the general feel as though he had just walked unwelcome into a private joke. "Where's the message?" he asked, narrowing his eyes and watching the technicians carefully.
"Sorry sir, hold on a second sir, I'll get that for you," Walter said, his hands fumbling around on the keyboard to bring up the recorded message.
The general watched the screen above his head as it crackled with static and then Colonel Braxton's face snapped onto the screen. "Um sir, we have a bit of a situation here. Nothing . . . horrible, but we thought you'd want to know." General Landry tried to hide his impatience. It seemed the Colonel was reluctant to deliver the news, but the general couldn't think of anything truly awful happening on P4X31. SG-1 had been there two-and-a-half years ago and had been greeted by the friendly people very warmly. The SGC had stayed in contact with the people, as there were a few small deposits of naquidah on the planet that were being harvested. SG-8 had been there to oversee just such a project as a new deposit had been recently discovered. "Um . . . there's a woman here who claims Dr. Jackson. . . is the father of her child." A snicker was heard in the background and the colonel looked back sharply at his off-camera team member. "I have to admit sir, the kid looks like he could be Dr. Jackson's. Also, sir," the colonel continued after shooting another glare behind him as his team member snickered again. "She says she's dying from some kind of incurable disease and she wants us to bring the kid back to the SGC so he can . . . um, be with his father." The colonel shrugged apologetically, clearly at a loss of what to do. "Anyway sir, we'll see if there's anything else we can do to figure this out and check back in a couple hours." Colonel Braxton backed up and the transmission dissolved back into static.
General Landry stood there for a minute, trying to process what he'd just heard and realizing why the gate technicians had been acting so strange as he first came in. Obviously, this needed to be discussed with Dr. Jackson himself, but he was currently on a mission with SG-1 until tomorrow morning. The general sighed, deciding he could wait until the next transmission from SG-8 before sending a message to SG-1 about this. He highly doubted that what this woman claimed was true, but Daniel had managed to get himself into stranger things. He suddenly realized that the technicians and airmen in the gate room were watching him.
"Everyone back to work," he said a little gruffly. "And don't go spreading this all over the base people." He turned and returned to his office, realizing with a shake of his head that SG-1 never ceased to surprise him.
SG-8 sent another message through not even two hours later, and this time Landry was ready and was in the gate room so he could talk to Colonel Braxton personally. The screen crackled to life again and the general tried to ignore the eager way in which the gate technicians waited for more news. Landry had the brief, somewhat disturbing thought that this was the kind of thing daytime TV shows presented, and the technicians were not doing anything to change that thought.
"Go ahead Colonel," Landry said, having to admit to himself that he was very curious about the situation as well.
The comm fizzled and shorted and then came through clear, allowing those in the control room to hear the sound of a crying child. Colonel Braxton looked slightly panicked as he started speaking. "Sir, the woman I told you about earlier . . . uh . . . well, she's dead sir."
Landry was surprised to hear that. They really might have a problem here. The crying grew louder in the background and Colonel Braxton glanced over his shoulder with a frown. "Colonel, do you have the child in question with you?" the general asked, fearing the answer.
"Uh, yes sir. No one else in the town will take him. They have this really strong belief that the kid should be with Dr. Jackson." The colonel's eyes were now quite large and he was looking a little desperate.
Yep, definitely a problem. "Colonel, are you sure no one will take care of the child?"
"Yes, sir. I believe our only choice is to bring him back, sir."
The general pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily. "Any chance the child carries the same disease as the mother?"
The colonel shook his head. "I guess there's a chance sir, but the mother died of some kind of cancer as far as we can tell, and no one else in the village is sick with it."
The general sighed again. "All right Colonel, come on through."
"Thank you, sir!" Colonel Braxton said, immediately beginning to shout orders to his team and shutting off the transmission.
General Landry leaned over the control desk and switched on the comm for the whole base. "Anyone with any experience with children please report to the gateroom," he said, looking at the gate with apprehension. This was going to be a long day.
A few minutes later, several confused looking members of SG teams and general staff at the mountain were in the gate room, looking up at the general through the window. He supposed he should go down there and explain it to them, so with another heavy sigh, he went down into the gate room.
"All right people, in a few minutes, SG-8 is going to come through the gate with a baby." He paused briefly, wondering the best way to phrase the next part and watched as the people he was addressing give each other confused looks. "The child just lost his mother and the villagers seem to think the kid belongs here, so you are going to have to take care of him."
The people were giving each other even more confused looks. A member of SG-6 stepped forward. "Sir, I don't mind helping out, but why do the villagers think the kid is our responsibility?"
General Landry just looked at him, trying to figure out a way to tell the truth without mentioning Daniel. He finally settled on using his rank. "That's classified, Captain."
Just then, the gate activated and everyone turned to watch, faces alight in the blue glow. SG-8 stepped through, and the sound of crying filled the room. As the team strode down the ramp, Landry's eyes went to the source of the sound. The little boy had buried his head in Lieutenant McCauley's shoulder, his little body trembling with each sob. Landry was reminded that the poor little guy had just been taken from everything he knew by strange men he'd never seen before and a feeling of pity swept over him.
The team reached the bottom of the ramp, and everyone looked toward the general, awaiting orders for this strange situation. Landry cleared his throat and looked at the expectant faces around him. "Okay, we're going to need an away team to get supplies for him, and a team to stay here and take care of him," he said, speaking loudly to be heard over the crying. "And by the way, Colonel," he said, addressing Colonel Braxton. "What's his name?"
"She called him Ethaneas, sir," the Colonel replied.
Landry frowned. That was a mouthful. "All right, you, you, and you, take the kid to the infirmary and make sure everything's okay, and the rest of you head out and gather what you can for him. SG-8, hit the showers."
Everyone moved off, following their respective orders and the crying faded as the "team" took the little boy down the hall to the infirmary, leaving the general with the hard part – telling Daniel to get back to base because they'd found a kid on some distant planet that was supposedly his. And, it was night by now on P784X2 so he'd have to wake up the team to do it.
Sighing, he went back up to the control room. "Chief, dial P784X2. I've got to talk to SG-1."
Daniel shifted on the hard ground, trying to find a spot where the large rock underneath his sleeping bag wouldn't dig into his back. He had hoped the layer of pine needles from the trees surrounding them would make a comfortable bed, but apparently, it was a very big rock. He finally decided it was impossible and resigned himself to a night of being uncomfortable, when his com crackled to life.
"SG-1! Come in!"
The sudden sound made Daniel jump, and he fumbled with his pack in the dark, trying to get to the com unit. He could hear the rest of the team also trying to get to their com units in the darkness. Sam had been on watch and got to her's first.
"This is Colonel Carter." Daniel looked toward her voice and could just make out her fuzzy outline in the darkness. He was reaching for his flash light when a sudden light blinded him.
"Oops, sorry," Vala said, lowering her flash light.
"No you're not," Daniel muttered, hearing the grin in her voice.
"SG-1, this is General Landry. There's a situation here at the base that requires Dr. Jackson's immediate attention."
Daniel clicked his com and spoke. "General?"
Landry cut him off. "Believe me son, this is one of those things you're just going to have to see for yourself."
The team exchanged confused looks. Then Cam picked up his com.
"Sir, it's going to take us four hours to get back to the gate; probably more in the dark."
"I'm aware of that Colonel," the general said, starting to sound annoyed. "Just get back here as soon as you can."
"Yes sir," Sam said. "We'll see you in a few hours."
"Good. Landry out."
"Daniel's in trouble!" Vala said in a sing-song voice, nudging his arm.
He ignored her and started untangling himself from his sleeping bag.
"Seriously though," Cam said switching on his own flashlight and starting to roll up his sleeping bag. "What the heck could require your immediate attention at the base?"
"Well, I'll tell you what, if it's just some cruddy old translation, I am not going to be happy!" Vala said, stuffing the sleeping bag into her backpack.
Daniel glared at her. "It's not my fault the general woke you up."
"I believe the general wished us to return in haste," Teal'c rumbled, already packed up.
Vala stuck her tongue out at Daniel and resumed packing her bag. Daniel glared at her for a minute and then began rolling up his own sleeping bag.
A few minutes later, they were all trudging through the forest, their flashlight beams sweeping the ground. The thick pine trees surrounding them blocked any light from the moon or stars and the flashlights only cut a thin beam through the heavy darkness.
Vala shrunk close to Daniel, jumping every time the movement of their flashlights caused a shadow to move. Daniel sighed in mild annoyance, but had to admit the forest was a little creepy.
"Daniel," Sam said from behind him. "Was there anything in your lab that could have caused a problem?"
"Sam, it's your lab that causes problems. Namely, explosions," Cam teased.
"Ha ha," Sam said, unamused. She hadn't exploded that many things in her lab.
Daniel thought for a moment but couldn't think of anything he'd left at the base that would cause a big enough problem to require them all to trudge through this dark forest in the middle of the night. "I don't think so. It's probably something someone brought through the gate."
"Perhaps another Ancient device that requires a sound understanding of the language," Teal'c contributed.
"Or maybe," Vala jumped in, "It's a map to an incredible treasure!"
Daniel rolled his eyes. "I kind of doubt that would require my immediate attention."
Vala continued guessing what could be waiting for them back at the base, each guess getting crazier and more unlikely than the last, until they finally reached the gate. Daniel dialed Earth as fast as possible, mostly because he was sick of Vala's guesses, but also because he was getting pretty curious as to what the general needed. The gate whooshed outward, the sudden light blinding them for a moment, and then they stepped through, Vala leading the way eagerly.
General Landry ventured into the guest room cautiously. The last time he'd come to check on the kid, the "babysitting team" had just gotten him calmed down from his traumatizing trip through the gate, but the kid had taken one look at the general and started crying again.
This time however, the little boy was sound asleep and the "team" was leaving for the evening, passing the baton – i.e. the baby monitor – to Lieutenant North, one of the nurses on duty overnight.
As the general came into the room, the three of them who had been caring for the little boy filed past him, weariness evident on their faces. Landry sighed. He probably should have rotated the troops a little bit. Sighing again, he realized he could handle alien invasions with no problem but the invasion of one tiny boy was almost proving too much for him.
He gazed at the sleeping little boy thoughtfully. Now that the boy's face was relaxed in sleep, he could definitely see the resemblance to Dr. Jackson, though his face was partially obscured by the thumb in his mouth. Something told him the little boy had deep blue eyes and probably a passion for languages and ancient civilizations as well.
The general laughed at himself. Looking at the little boy it was easy to imagine him being Jackson's child, but he was sure the man was not that irresponsible. This had to be some crazy misunderstanding.
Just then, the faint noise of sirens caught his attention. He walked out into the hall and realized someone, probably Walter, had thought ahead and disabled the sirens in the the immediately surrounding area of the guest room, so they wouldn't wake the little boy up. Landry could just make out the words "off-world activation" from the next hallway over and hurried up to the control room.
"It's SG-1's IDC, sir," the gate technician informed him.
"Open the iris," the general said. He felt both relief and apprehension at the return of SG-1. He still hadn't worked out exactly how he was going to tell Jackson about the child, but he also knew he could give the responsibility of the little boy to SG-1 and they would take care of it like they took care of everything he threw at them.
Vala came through first, almost running down the ramp. The rest of the team came through more sedately, though the general could see the curiosity on their faces as well.
"SG-1," Landry said through the speaker. "Go get changed and meet me in the briefing room."
Vala's face fell. "Give us a clue at least?" she said looking up at him.
"Briefing room," he replied and started heading up the stairs.
Ten minutes later, SG-1 was seated around the briefing table, waiting for the general to join them.
"He's doing it on purpose," Vala pouted, her chin resting in her hand.
The rest of the team didn't reply. They were all thinking that this was turning out to be much less of an emergency than they had thought.
Finally, the general came into the room, waving Sam and Cameron down as they started to stand. "All right people, take a look at this." The general had decided that showing them Colonel Braxton's transmissions would be the easiest way to go. He had also considered just showing them to Daniel first, but he figured they'd all know eventually, might as well just get it over with.
SG-1 leaned forward as the screen came on and the message began playing. The general had the pleasure of watching their faces as they heard Colonel Braxton's announcement. They all looked at Daniel with slightly amused looks, eyebrows raised at first, and Daniel just looked confused, and a little annoyed. Then, as the second message played, their faces changed from amusement to shock to confusion.
The transmission ended and everyone was silent for several moments, even Vala shocked into silence.
"Sir," Sam finally ventured. "Does this mean the . . . child, is here? On the base?"
The general nodded and turned his attention to Daniel. He was staring down at the desk, his brow furrowed. Vala was staring at him, her mouth slightly open.
"Uh, Jackson? Something you wanna tell us?" Cam said.
Daniel looked up and realized everyone was staring at him. "He's not . . . mine," he said, his annoyance at the situation clear.
"What planet was this on, sir?" Sam asked.
"P4X31. I was just about to ask you if anything strange could have happened. We've dealt with memory devices before," the general said, reminding them that stranger things than this had happened.
"We were only there for a couple of hours, sir. I don't think the people would have had access to any kind of memory changing device either," Sam said, her thoughts moving rapidly through the different possible scenarios that could have caused this confusion.
"I believe you, but that doesn't solve our problem. The people on the planet won't care for the child as long as they believe he's Dr. Jackson's," Landry said, looking around the table.
"Would not a simple DNA test prove Daniel Jackson is not the child's father?" Teal'c suggested.
"Yes, of course. We're already running the tests, but it's going to take a little while. In the mean time, I need you to take care of him," the general said.
There was a moment of silence.
"Sir?" Cam started. "You want us to what?"
"Don't worry people, he should stay asleep for the next little while. It's not morning on his planet for another six hours or so." The general watched as they all calculated that morning on P4X31 was about 3 AM on Earth.
"Where is he?" Daniel asked, with more than a trace of apprehension.
"He's in guest room 12, and the baby monitor is in the infirmary with Lieutenant North," the general replied, amused at the trepidation in which his team faced their new challenge. "Oh, and his name is Ethaneas. Get to it, people."
The team stood as the general left the room and looked at each other. Finally Cam shrugged and led the way out of the room. "C'mon guys, this is gonna be easy compared to savin' the galaxy," he said with a cocky grin.
The rest of the team followed him, but Daniel stayed seated for a moment. He kept getting the feeling that he was missing something. He shrugged it off and stood slowly, following the rest of his team down the stairs.
They reached the guest room and found the door slightly open. Cam pushed it open slowly and they all filed silently inside. When they were all squished into the small guest room, the thought came to Daniel that they probably should have gone in separately, but they were all equally curious.
A sliver of light from the open doorway fell on the sleeping child, and Daniel gazed at him, Vala close behind and looking over his shoulder.
"Daniel," she whispered. "He looks just like you!"
The other three members of SG-1 looked back and forth between Daniel and the little boy, comparing them.
"The child does bear a striking resemblance," Teal'c said softly.
"You sure there's not something you wanna tell us, Jackson?" Cameron said with a grin.
The little boy whimpered suddenly and rolled over, looking for a moment like he was going to wake up. SG-1 froze in place, holding their breath, but the little boy remained asleep. They all backed carefully out of the room, and Cam shut the door most of the way.
"Close one," he said, grin still in place.
"Well, Daniel," Vala said as they started down the hall toward the infirmary. "I can see why they think he's yours! He looks just like you!"
Daniel didn't reply. The feeling that he was forgetting something had returned in full force when he'd seen the little boy, and it was frustrating him. Or maybe it was just Vala that was frustrating him.
"You okay?" Sam asked him quietly, falling back to walk with him as their other team members went ahead, continuing the discussion regarding the child's resemblance to Daniel.
"What?" Daniel said, raising his head and looking at her. "Oh, yeah," he replied as his brain caught up to what she'd said.
She looked closely at him and he tried to give her a reassuring smile. "Daniel, I've known you for a long time. What's the matter?" she asked, seeing right through the false smile.
He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. "I just . . . I guess I feel like I'm missing something."
To his surprise, Sam nodded. "Yeah, me too."
They looked at each other for a minute.
"Come on, guys," Cam called to them from down the hall. He held up the baby monitor and waved it around. "We're gonna work out babysitting shifts!"
They picked up the pace to catch up with the rest of their team. "We'll figure it out," Sam said quietly. Daniel shot her a grateful look and then they were engulfed in Vala and Cam's banter about who would take the first shift with the baby monitor.
