Author: Amberfly.
Series. George's Folly. 02#
Title: Intricacies and Variables.
Category: General

The next morning, Jack's chickens came home to roost. Generally speaking. George was tired, embarrassed by his 2IC's behavior, and livid with the damage done to Daniel's room. He knew exactly who was to blame and retribution was to be swift. Eyes narrowed, he didn't bother to knock.

"Jack! Out of that bed this instant! You and I have a lot to discuss!" Hands on hips, George used his best military voice and boomed. "Now, airman!"

"Mggrpphhh?" Muffled sounds emanated from the depths of the blankets. One bare little foot hang out, toes twitching, and a stray arm flung itself clear. Jack was stirring.

Ear tugged firmly, Jack was unceremoniously hauled out of bed and made to stand at attention.

"Hey! I need that ear!" The frown that followed was comical due to the reddish hair sticking up like a toilet brush. The cow lick was especially pronounced and George thought he looked a lot like Huckleberry Finn. Mores the pity. The cute appearance of the boy didn't change his mind though, and George continued his lecture.

"Young man, listen up real careful. Now is not the time to be sassing me. I have a hankering to whoop that behind of yours for you."

Jack O'Neill looked at his accuser, squinted a little and then yawned widely. Clearly the parental threat wasn't taken to heart. Knuckling at his eyes with childish vulnerability, Jack looked younger then ever. His pajama top was buttoned up crookedly, his pants were riding up his legs; and he had a stuffed toy under his arm. George felt his temper deflate; Jack was just a little boy. Just a very naughty one. His temper returned.

Sitting up and smacking his lips together, Jack whined. "Huh? I 'don wanna go to school! I wanna go back to sleep!" He then rolled onto his stomach and passed gas.

"Jonathon O'Neill!"

"Yup? Better out than in, sir."

After the previous night's debacle, it had taken the little colonel awhile to get to sleep and he was tired. George was equally tired, and as he held the upper hand, he whipped the covers off, while lightly swatting the upturned butt.

"Ouch! Hey!" Jack opened his mouth to continue his complaint when George growled deep in his throat. Raising a warning finger, he explained that Jack had to the count of three, and then there was going to be unpleasantness. "One-two…"

Jack gulped, and biting his top lip, looked longingly at his messy little nest. Raising a hand and flapping it close to his lips, he muttered. "Three?"

Bristling with indignation, George drawled in his best Texan accent, refusing to rise to the bait. "Well, young man, what do you have to say about your disgraceful behavior last night? In addition, what are you going to say to Daniel? Look at this room!"

"Hello Daniel?" Jack was nothing if not opportunistic. "No, really, sir, look there's Daniel!"

Walking in, coffee in one hand, walnut cookie in the other, Doctor Jackson looked around the room, his mouth opening and shutting like a stranded goldfish.

"What the?" He glared and made a lunge for the bed. "I am going to…."

"Doctor Jackson!" George didn't feel like parenting another SG1 team member. "That's quite enough!"

"One? Two? Three?" The little boy giggled at his cutting wit.

Not everyone appreciated it, alas. Face turning a deeper shade of red, Hammond pointed to the bathroom and growled an order" That's enough! I'll put that little bit of insubordination down to you not being fully awake!" Reaching across and grabbing the skinny little arm, George then frog marched the cackling Jack into the bathroom.

"Hurry up and finish what you need to do, and when you are done, make sure you pick up all those towels!" Giving the little boy a push, the general bunched his fists on his hips. "It beggars belief what that child can do in under twelve hours! Look at this room!"

"Dear God!" Daniel said as he spied a pile of soggy, rumpled papers. "Are those my papers on the Aztec culture on P3X-444?" Flapping his arms in the air, he flew across the room to rescue the soggy papers before squawking with the terrible truth. "They are!! I spent hours translating them! Jack!"

Silence. Moments ticked by.

The said little boy was busy in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet while cutting his toenails with Daniel's nail clippers.

"Jack? I know you can hear me!"

"Daniel! I am taking a dump!" Crawling on his knees, Jack was busily trying the find the nail clippers he dropped.

"Jack! That language isn't appropriate!" The first real smile of the day tugged at George's lips.

"Please!" Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and counted to ten. SG1 all knew Jack wasn't happy about the Tok'ra arm bracelet shrinking him, but he couldn't see how it was actually his fault.

He tried again to save his possessions. "General, if he needs another room, let him have Teal'c's! The worst he can do is burn the building down." Turning around and sitting on the rumpled bed, Daniel slapped his hand on his forehead at the candy smeared all over the covers. "How long did they say the antidote will take to work? Maybe we can freeze Jack? Jacob might have him."

Sighing, George took a sad breath, "Whatever the time frame it's still too long for Jack. I suggest we all knuckle down and make the best of an impossible situation. I'll make sure your room is restored properly, and I'll take the cost of the damage from Colonel O'Neill's paycheck." Looking around the room, he lowered his voice and grimly added, "That's right after I take it from his scrawny little hide!"

Silence filled the room once more. Daniel took a step backwards. "Oh, that's okay, sir. I'm sure Jack is sorry."

"Trust me, he will be." George called out to the mysteriously quiet little pest. "Jack? Front and centre! I haven't heard an apology I am happy with yet!"

Peering into the toilet bowl, Jack saw the lost nail clippers disappear down the S-bend. "Drat!" Opening the door, laden with wet towels, Jack dumped them at Daniel's feet and muttered, "Said I was sorry last night!" Lowering his voice to a whisper, Jack added, "Having trouble remembering things, sir? Know how you can drop a decade or two!" With a casual shrug, throwing his hands out in a conciliatory manner, he said.

"God only knows why you are all surprised! It's me! You were crazy to have left me alone in the first place! I am only seven years old after all!"

His hands tucked behind his back, his shiny black shoes tapping with irritation, General George Hammond looked down his nose at his little charge. "That's enough, Jack! You swore you would behave like the officer and gentleman you are supposed to be. Now, we have a lot to discuss before we leave the Mountain."

"We do?"

OoO

Jack's eyes slid from one unimpressed face to the other. No one was laughing and no one seemed to be enjoying themselves. Good, neither was he! Let them be the seven-year-old and see if they felt like being the model citizen. He knew he'd been a hellion and if Charlie had behaved like this, he'd have been dancing around rubbing a smarting little backside. But, he wasn't Charlie, and he didn't care.

"We are waiting, young man." George was grinding out every word and Jack knew he was playing with fire.

Frowning and scrunching his bare toes into a tight ball, Jack fought the urge to poke out his tongue, run away. He figured no one knew the bowels of the SGC better than him, and maybe spending the month there wouldn't be so bad. Sighing and giving his bottom lip another savage chew; he felt the start of another blush from his neck all the way to his ears. George had already warned him about running away and had sworn to bring in the marines and their tracker dogs to haul his ass back again. It was one thing to be manhandled by the general but quite another by his underlings.

"Jack? I asked you a question." General Hammond growled.

What ever it was, Jack hadn't been listening. "Huh?"

He hadn't expected to be treated like this, and pushing his bottom lip out, the little colonel folded his arms tightly across his belly. He wanted sympathy, he wanted the odd beer, he wanted Anise to get her ass back here and fix him. If being surrounded by toe tapping people twice his size wasn't bad enough, things took a turn for the worst. George reached across and tweaked Jack by his ear.

"We are still awaiting your apology to Daniel!"

"Generallll, let-me-go-oo!" Jack whined and wriggled desperately. "That ear is one of a set!"

George was having none of it, what was left of his patience had officially expired.

The more Jack wriggled, the more his ear hurt, and reluctantly standing still, he looked up, and groaned. While he admitted he might have been less than considerate with Danny's belongings, he couldn't see why such recriminations were necessary. The flooding was an accident. The borrowing of the candy to be expected, and the clothes and papers flung everywhere was temporary madness on his behalf. It was the Tok'ra and their damn wristbands fault. The colognes, deodorants and gels upended and discarded were his way of saving Danny the embarrassment of the marines thinking he was a girl. It was kindness really, not vandalism.

Astonishment and indignation flickering in his eyes, George flexed and unflexed his hand subconsciously. "Jack O'Neill, my patience with you is about to expire, I suggest you chose your next words carefully." Zeroing in, his nose inches from the little colonel's, George breathed, "understand me, airman?"

Remembering the swat to his hindquarters, Jack wriggled, and putting his hand to his ear, tried to take a strategic step backwards. "Ow! Sir! How am I going to hear you yelling at me if my ear turns black, rots, and falls off?"

Tightening his hold, the general maneuvered the squirming little colonel back into his eye line. "Apologize, and I'll let you go, Jack."

"Never! Ow! Sir! My eye is bugging out now! Letmegoletmegoletmegoooo!"

"Apologize."

"Crap!"

Day two of his enforced childhood was not going well, and with an uncharted ocean of thought, Jack couldn't help imagining a filthy cell complete with the obligatory piece of dirty chalk, looming in his immediate future. That or a mountain of unpeeled potatoes.

Squeaking, Jack began to explain his nights work. Seeing the words form in his mind, and knowing how ridiculous they would sound, he couldn't seem to stop them as they tumbled from his mouth. Talking quicker and quicker, he explained in detail, complete with gagging sounds, how he suffered from insomnia because he was force fed chicken strips with radioactive broccoli. Batting at the general's hand and whining, he said, "This was your all fault, General!"

"What? My fault?"

Waving his hand in the air as he felt another tweak to his ear, Jack told of Unas rampaging through the can and his bravery under fire as stuffed the monster down the u-bend. Putting his hand over the generals, and trying to unlace his fingers, Jack winced and glared at Daniel before he added spitefully.

"Those boxes full of your incredibly boring notes fell out of the cupboards when Nirrti tried to infiltrate the room, but lost the will to live while reading them. Nice one, Daniel! Who needs a zat when they can read about your theories of the boring and dead?"

"Boring? Dead? Nirrti?" Daniel did another stranded goldfish impersonation.

Fixing the open-mouthed archeologist with a scathing look, Jack sniffed, and polishing his nails on the palm of the other hand, added, "If it wasn't for me, people, the world again would be in peril."

The indignation waxed fast and furious, and Daniel and George were beyond feeling merely aggravated. Listening to Jack's excuses, Daniel waved his hand in the air and spluttered they were preposterous, even for him.

"A Unas? You destroyed my room because you thought a Unas was in my bathroom?"

Throwing his arms out, his glasses slipping constantly down the bridge of his nose, Daniel demanded an explanation that was at least half-believable. "Why don't you try that again, and this time try throwing the truth in?" Turning around and pointing to the draws hanging out of his cupboards, Daniel said between gritted teeth, "Look what you've done in one night!"

It had to be said that the once neat and tidy VIP quarters were in disarray. The carpet tiles began to smell damp and musty. The bathroom littered with soggy bits of bunched up toilet paper. Draws and cupboards hung precariously open, revealing private and personal items. The air-conditioned had blown letters and then carelessly dumped them wherever they landed.

Picking up a handful of Daniel's torn papers and placing them on the table with meticulous care, General Hammond lowered his voice and struggling for patience, said, "Jack, apologize to Doctor Jackson, pack your gear, and come with me. What you have done to his personal things is reprehensible and a lesson about consequences of actions is well over due. While you are under my care, things may not be quite so rosy for you."

Huffing at life's intricacies, variants, and injustices, Jack blinked, and considering himself a true martyr, sighed. Drawing a breath at another rattling shake, he shrugged. "I don't know! It just rather got messy when I wasn't looking. Sorry, I guess, Daniel. To quote a great team leader, "Time to build that bridge and get over it, Doctor Jackson."

Jack beamed. This was a witty comment and surely they would all fall about laughing.

No one moved a muscle.

His chin hitting his chest, Jack figured the half ass apology was better than nothing. After all, he thought to himself while studying his tiny toes with great interest, it wasn't his fault a Unas had spooked him. It was his considered opinion that the conversation now bordered on the trivial and paltry. He had apologized, what more could these people expect? Blood?

Hearing the snort of disbelief from Daniel, the little boy with the cowlicks grinned behind his hand. Rolling his eyes dramatically, Jack whined, "Said I was sorry didn't I? Wanna ya want, Daniel? An affidavit written in Unas drool?"

"That's it! Jack! Move!"

"Ow! Ow! Sir! Ow!"

Marched out the door, his ear once again smarting under the tender ministrations of the two star general, the tiny, ginger haired little colonel groaned. His little feet barely touching the ground, he thought about the growing blemishes to his extraordinary reputation. Daring to throw a shifty glance at the General, he narrowed his eyes, and vowed to do whatever it took to repair it. "If I can survive the Tok'ra and their arm bands, I can sure as heck survive you."


Brave words indeed.