Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with SG-1. :D Although... no, nvm. -giggle-
Season: Uhm... -looks spaced out for a moment- Sorry, haven't had my coffee, so I don't know. But the one where Jack has just become General of the SGC, probably.
Other warnings: I like to warn against my usual silliness, but I suppose that doesn't count. So, PGish or PG-13.
--
"Unrelated"
Chapter Two
Part One: "The Clueless Puppy-Dog"
"Bowling?" Kyleigh asked her bestest, bestest friend ever, Ethan Cahill.
"Sure!" he exclaimed, and she wondered again why it had to be a law of the universe that opposites attract. "We should go some time. It's really not as hard as it looks!"
"Uhm... sure, okay," Kyleigh replied, with a touch more noncommitalness--was that even a word?--than was required.
Ethan pouted, but she remedied the situation, quickly, by giving him an extra chicken strip. He'd already eaten his whole burger and still wasn't full. "By the way, Ky," he asked, out of nowhere, "Remember those guys that kidnapped you that time...?"
"They didn't kidnap me," Kyleigh answered, with annoyance, and brushed her bangs out of her eyes, with the back of her hand. She was holding a fry, so she couldn't spare her fingers, and her hair was getting in her eyes.
"Ah, hah!" Ethan said, triumphantly, and gestured toward her with his chicken strip. "You didn't even need to ask who I was talking about!"
Kyleigh gave him a look. "What are you getting at...?"
"You liked them, didn't you?" Ethan wondered.
"Huh?" Kyleigh exploded, and kicked his leg, beneath the restaurant table.
"Ow!" he protested, and hunched down to rub his "injured" leg. "Hey... why'd'you have to be so mean?"
"Because you insist on being so stupid," Kyleigh retorted, and now he gave her a narrow-eyed pout. If he weren't so cute, she probably would've ditched him ages ago, Kyleigh contemplated. She hid her snicker behind a hand, and murmured, "Sorry... Anyway, why are you bringing those guys up all of a sudden?"
Ethan appraised her for a moment before replying, "Because... I think they just walked in a few minutes ago."
"Wha'!" Kyleigh exclaimed, and glanced around surreptitiously.
"Hahah! Gotcha!" Ethan said, and this time she meant it, when she kicked him.
"Ethan," she grumbled, and chewed on another fry, seething.
"Man... I'm gonna have bruises, Ky... You have such a bad temper," he complained.
"Serves you right," she retorted.
"Yeah, whatever..."
It was a few minutes later, in the car ride back to her apartment, that he told her, seriously, "The truth is... I'm kind of concerned. I mean, you meet these two guys... you barely know them, one meeting, and you talk about them... almost every month."
Kyleigh's brows went up. "It's only been two or three months, Eth'. And it was the weirdest experience I've ever had, next to being able to do what I do."
Well, that and when she'd woken up, three years ago, hadn't remembered who she was, yet had this strange gift, and the only friend in the world that she'd had was Ethan.
He frowned at her, and she tried not to glance at him too much, seeing as she was the one driving. "Okay, I'm coming clean. I see you as a little sis, Kyleigh. And I'm letting you know... because one of them called your cell the other day. I answered it... and I never told you. He said they need your help."
Kyleigh almost slammed on the brakes. She'd always known Ethan saw her that way, but what she hadn't known was that she'd gotten a call from the two mystery guys that had rescued her a couple months ago. Somehow, and she wasn't quite sure how, Ethan had managed to block it from her sixth sense.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she wondered, more distraught by the incongruity of her gift, than with finding out he'd kept something from her.
"Because... I don't want you to get hurt! Do you even listen to me, Ky?" Ethan answered, truly upset now. "He told me to have you call him back if you were willing to help. He gave me the number. I still have it, but Ky..."
She pulled into the apartment complex and found her space, parked, and turned to glare at him. He went on, "Are you interested in that guy? The younger one...? Because I want to hear the truth now before... I guess before I have to hear it when you're all broken-hearted and snotty-nosed inconsoleable about losing him."
Kyleigh would've giggled if she hadn't been so upset. "Oh, come on, Eth'! He's gotta be like twenty years older than me. And guys like that already have girlfriends!"
"Uh, huh," Ethan replied, unconvinced.
"Sure, I mean," she continued, "I thought he was cute. And he seemed like a nice guy, but he was way too old and complicated for me. Guys like that are special, and definitely don't go for girls like me."
Looking a bit more appeased, Ethan mumbled, half-heartedly, "Okay... and... what about the call? Are you going to help them?"
Kyleigh gave him the look. "Are you still worried about me getting hurt, or something?" she asked, irritably.
Ethan sighed and cut his eyes away, gritting his teeth silently. "No, forget about it," he said, and when he looked at her again, he was smiling sadly. "Since you're not interested in that guy, I'm okay with you going. Just be careful."
She grinned and punched him lightly. "Cool. And Ethan?"
"Huh?"
"Don't ever answer my cell again."
--
Part Two: "She's That Good"
"So, Danny," Jack began, in that tone he got when he was just bored and looking for something to do, "You lookin' forward to seeing the psychic chick again?"
"Shut up, Jack," Daniel replied, sweetly, and flipped a page in the book he wasn't really reading.
Samantha Carter, whose workspace the team was lounging in at the moment, wondered, "Do you really think she'll be able to tell us what this device is?"
They'd already gotten through telling her and Teal'c about Kyleigh Ramirez, their encounter in the grocery store two months ago, and her strange ability to know things about people that she really shouldn't. The device Sam was referring to sat on the table in the midst of SG-1, and their present CO, Brigadier General Jack O'Neill.
They'd come across it in their latest 'gating, on a pretty-much deserted planet. Daniel was hoping, against hope, that it wasn't the thing that had made the planet deserted in the first place. Although, there was nothing to point in that direction because there was really nothing left to point.
The civilization had, apparently, been quite advanced from the structures of the city and other technologies they had been brought back. However, those things had all been similiar enough to Earth's technology for their purposes to be discovered almost right away.
This thing had script written all around it, but the language was so dissimilar from anything that Daniel had ever encountered, that he wasn't able to find any references to even begin to translate it. And Sam couldn't tell what it was by the thing's structure either...
It was a medium-sized, metallic box, with an oval aperture on one side that seemed to extend nearly to the other side of the box. No one was about to stick their hand in there, even though, evidently, that was what activated the device.
"If she's not able to tell what it is," Daniel answered Sam's question, "Then she'll at least be able to tell us whether it's dangerous or not."
"If she's that good," Sam wondered, "Why don't we draft her to the Stargate program?"
Jack frowned a bit. "Because she's barely an adult. She still asks, 'Am I going to get in trouble.' Anyone young enough to ask that, isn't old enough to fight evil alien wanna-be gods."
"You have a point," Sam replied, dryly, and Teal'c who was lounging next to her, glanced over and raised his brow.
"But she has not even returned Daniel Jackson's call, as of yet," he stated.
Daniel grimaced. When he'd called the cell phone number she'd given him and Jack, one of her friends, a kid, probably the friend from before--Ethan, had answered. Daniel got the feeling the guy didn't like him much, and probably wasn't going to give Kyleigh the message. But he'd decided to give it a few days.
"Maybe I should call her again," he murmured, and suddenly, the office phone rang.
Everyone glanced at each other, and Jack raised his brow, comically, and crossed over to the wall to pick it up. "O'Neill," he said, and then his other brow went up too. "Go ahead and escort her to Colonel Carter's office."
A second later, he hung up, and looked at them, mouth rather near fly-catcher status. "She drove right up to the gates," he said, and none of them needed an explanation about who Jack meant.
Sam's blue eyes widened. "She really is that good."
--
Part Three: "Do Not Touch"
Kyleigh, pale, shaking, and about to wet her pants, was escorted into the Air Force base by a military version of a security guard, then down an elevator, and through some shiny, white halls to a small, technology-cluttered office.
'Why, oh, why did I think I would be okay coming here by myself?' She was seriously beginning to regret her impulsive decision.
And then she saw Jack and Daniel, and was so relieved she nearly wet herself anyway. "Hey," she squeaked, and the four in the room looked toward her, with varying degrees of surprise.
"We've been expecting you," Jack greeted, with quasi-formality, and she would have laughed if the SF hadn't still been holding onto her arm.
"Sir?" the guy asked, and General O'Neill waved his hand.
"Thanks, Airman, she's A-okay. We'll be fine. It's all good... dismissed, shoo, about your business." He shooed with his hand for good measure.
'Oh, Lord,' Kyleigh thought. 'They promoted him to general, and he's like this?'
The SF nodded, and finally let go of her arm to salute Jack and be on his way. Jack returned the salute, sloppily, and the poor Airman exited, stiffly, carefully shutting the door behind him.
Kyleigh would've sagged if she didn't think she would've sagged all the way down to her knees. So instead, she ventured closer to the team... team? And leaned against the worktable, her fingers holding onto the edge, lightly.
"Was it rude to not call first?" she quipped, and the blond woman--Samantha Carter, smiled at her. 'Huh? This is the woman Jack has a thing for, and she has a thing for him back? Oh, no! He's her CO... what the heck is a CO? Commanding Officer... Crazy abbreviations...'
"No, it's fine," Daniel said, in the meantime, "I was just about to call you again."
Kyleigh winced. "Yeah, about that... Ethan is nuts--never gave me the message. I had to find out over lunch, yesterday, when he decided to come clean."
"It's no big deal," Jack said, smoothly. "By the way, this is Teal'c--"
"Jack!" Daniel exclaimed, but Jack shot him a look and continued, "And this is Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, also an astrophysisist. And this," he pointed toward the conspicuous metal box on the table, "Is the alien--"
"Jack!" Daniel protested again, but Jack only ignored him again. "--device that we need help with."
"Oh..." Kyleigh said, and then her brain was suddenly flooded with a butt-load of information. She rubbed her temple and muttered, under her breath, "Goa'uld larvae, tretonin, Jaffa...? Naquadah reactor? I'm sure not in Kansas anymore, Toto."
Samantha gave her a strange look, and Kyleigh smiled, shakily, and asked, "I said something weird, didn't I?"
"Oh, just your Wizard of Oz comment," Sam replied, and glanced at Jack, brows raised.
Kyleigh looked toward him, too, and then muttered, "Doh!" and smacked herself in the forehead, with her palm. Then she realized what was going on and said, meekly, pointing behind her, vaguely, "I'm going to go stand in that corner for a bit, if you don't mind. I'll be right as rain in a few minutes, and then I'll take a look at the mystery box. I'll have to touch it... will that be okay?" she asked, backing up the whole time, far, far away from General O'Neill.
Teal'c looked like the cat who'd swallowed the canary, and she could only figure he found some amusement in this whole scenario. Heavens knew she didn't.
"That's fine," Sam told her, and Daniel, meanwhile, ducked his head out of embarrassment or hidden amusement.
Jack, thankfully, looked as blank as ever, so Kyleigh breathed a tiny sigh and settled herself against the corner of the room. "I'll just stand here... Thinking. Chilling." she told them, then decided she'd better explain before they got the idea that she was a complete freak, "You see, sometimes, in addition to that weird, little thing I can do with the knowing things I shouldn't, I'll pick up on a person's... er... personality. And then I can't separate my thoughts from theirs. Not that I can actually read their mind, but it's almost like I can."
Daniel flipped a page of the book he wasn't really reading and asked, "And you were picking up on Jack's... personality?"
Kyleigh nodded. "Okay, maybe I could've done a better job explaining that. It's more like-- When that alien crystal entity absorbed all your memories, General. It didn't really have your personality, just all the ideas that formed your personality."
Jack's face darkened for a moment, and she knew she'd treaded on dangerous ground once again. But then whatever it was vanished, with the nervous glances Daniel and Sam shot at him, and he said, cheerfully, "Oh... it all makes sense to me now."
"Great," Kyleigh grumbled, "I must have seeped up more of your brain waves than I thought, sir. I'd better stay in the corner for a few more minutes."
Jack threw up his hands. "Oh, for crying out loud! Come out of the corner. You're making me feel like an elementary school teacher."
Frustrated, Kyleigh stuck out her tongue at him and edged back over. She glanced at Sam once, noticing her hiding a smile by ducking her head, and Daniel averting his gaze everywhere but at her and Jack. She frowned at him, then impulsively reached out to the device.
When her hand touched it, though, she wished she hadn't shown so much bravado. Her brain, next to the things that had flooded into it because of Sam and Teal'c, felt like it was going to explode now with all the information the box held.
It was only when someone jerked her hand away from the box by her wrist, that she realized she'd been zoning out. "What happened?" Jack questioned, "You were off in lala land. Are you all right?"
"Um," Kyleigh replied, then realized she'd suddenly aquired dry-mouth. "It's like an Ancient Reposotory of Knowlege." Jack immediately dropped his hand from her wrist. "Except that it... doesn't reach out and grab you by the head and pour all of its information into it."
She reached for the box again, this time with both hands, and Sam made a protesting noise, Teal'c murmured, "Is that wise, Kyleigh Ramirez?" and Daniel looked like he was going to lean forward and grab her wrist, this time.
"It's all right," she assured them, "I can keep from... zoning out." She moved the box around and motioned toward the opening. "When a person places their hand inside this, they can access the information inside the box. But it's not gene activated like the Repository. And that's why all the people that used it, which was pretty much everybody, got sick and eventually died."
A second later, she realized how ludicrous it sounded and went on before anyone started to make fun of her, "No one stopped because it was somehow narcotic to them. It's filled with a ton of information, and a lot of it is recreational. Even their children were using it. It's really kind of sad."
"So," she smiled at Daniel, and refrained from winking too, "Don't touch it."
"That's just too weird," Daniel told her, and she grinned more widely.
"Sorry," she answered, but giggled, glancing sideways at Jack, who stood off to her right.
She lowered her eyes out of embarrassement for teasing Daniel, and they landed on that book he wasn't really reading, again.
Squinting, Kyleigh reached for it, and Daniel pulled away a bit, not expecting her to get that close to his personal-space bubble. She looked at the cover and blinked at it. Some type of language/ History/Archeology book from what she could gather from the title. But when she looked at the text samples on the inside, she realized they didn't look anything like the scrolls of language on the outside of the alien box.
"You weren't really trying to see what it said from this were you?" she exclaimed, and then wished she hadn't a moment later.
"Don't tell me you're good with languages too?" Daniel retorted.
"No!" She dropped the book as if it were a live coal. "I was just wondering because it was the only thing I was getting off of you, and it's really disconcerting." She pouted, stuffing her fingers into her jeans up to the knuckles.
"But you were spilling Daniel's guts last time we met," Jack pointed out.
"My 'know' must be on the fritz," she grumbled, "First Ethan and now Daniel. It would be nice if it just decided to suddenly expire, but this wishy-washyness is annoying."
"We could have you checked out in the infirmary," Sam offered, but Kyleigh balked.
"Um... that's okay. I think I would rather just figure this out on my own. I mean, nothing against you guys... but..." She frowned, suddenly getting a new batch of know-cookies. "All the psychics you've had in the infirmary up to this point haven't been okay. I'd rather not find out if I have some type of brain tumor or something, thanks."
"Fainting spells aren't a positive indicator," Daniel pointed out, and she glared at him.
"You think I'm dying?"
"I didn't say that," he replied, looking as if he wanted to throw up his hands in surrender.
"Grr..." She was going to have to accept defeat this time around. But that didn't mean she was going to the infirmary. "No thanks. Maybe some other time." Then she added, sheepishly, "Um... would one of you mind walking me out of here?"
She tried not to glare when Daniel hid his smirk.
--
Thanks to those who reviewed the first chapter: Whoa... that was a long title. Erm. Heh. Yes, that coffee I drank while editing this has kicked in. :D
Thanks for reviewing, Max, Peregrine, Read300300, and Nighshae, and thanks for the favorite-add, Taelia! I really appreciate it. (I probably already said thanks, but it can't hurt to say it again.) And thanks, Bambina, for listening to me ramble about this fic. :D
What else? Oh, the reason I rewrote this second chapter--I thought that I cut the last one too short, and I'm sentimental. I decided I didn't want to kill off Kyleigh's character.
I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with this fic. I had some ideas about combining it with "Granted" somehow, but if any of you reviewers say "No! That idea sucks!" I will heed your sound warnings. ;)
Thanks again, everybody,
Misao-incarnate.
Fairly Important Note: After some major vacillating (which included posting a finished chapter of the version of this I was trying to decide if I wanted to pursue), I decided that I'm just going to let it be. That means that I'm just going to say that this fic is finished and hope you guys don't think it seems too weird a place to end it. I sort of wanted to make it longer, but I think it will be better if I don't try, for now, at least.
Thanks for your time, listening to me rant. ;) --M-i.
