Tangled Webs
A/N: Disclaimer's in the first chapter. Further AU notice ... Janet Frasier is alive and well and will remain so. Because I like her and she is badass. Just assume that damn staff blast missed her. *nods*
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June 21, Colorado Springs
Jack was surprised that Sam managed to keep her mouth shut until they got into the truck.
"Colonel ... " She started, looking severely irritated.
"Sam, staying would have pushed things into a rather ugly confrontation." Jack pointed out. "I don't know if you noticed, but Jim and Blair were both gearing up to kick our asses. Now, Blair might not look like much, but I think we've all learned not to assume anything? And yeah, we have Teal'c, but ... " Jim had been a Ranger, and even years retired, that made him someone Jack didn't want to tangle with if it could be avoided. He didn't doubt their ability to defeat Jim and company, but why go there if they didn't have to? "Besides, we're not exactly going to be letting them walk away." He gave Sam a smirk. "You got your laptop with you?" He wanted to know.
Like she went anywhere without the damn thing. "Of course." She grabbed it, understanding where Jack had been going with that question. Then she frowned. While powerful and heavily encrypted, her laptop didn't have anywhere near the power or speed of the base computers. "You're calling the General, right?" Considering she'd caught him halfway through dialing the base, Jack just grinned at her. "Call me a cab so I can head back to base. My laptop's good, but the base computers are better. I'll call you when I've got what we need."
"Leave me your laptop, would you, Sam? I want to look some stuff up." Daniel asked. Sentinels weren't his area of interest, though he'd encountered mentions of people with enhanced senses (though never called Sentinels as such) in tribal lore more than once. Confirming Blair's claims would help establish their bona fides, and if Blair had been as interested in the phenomenon as he said he was, there might be a paper trail he could follow from the academic angle while Sam tracked down other information.
"Sure." Sam handed over her laptop.
Jack, meanwhile, was having a quiet conversation with Hammond, who was understandably displeased with the situation. "Tell Janet, and see if you can get Thor on the horn. Whatever else is going on, there's something definitely wrong with Jon." He told Hammond. "Which is why I backed off rather than force a confrontation. If they move, we'll follow, but I doubt they're going to actually move. Ellison's military, so he's got to know."
Hammond sighed. "I'll trust your judgment, Jack, but get this dealt with fast. There's only so long I can stall before I have to inform certain parties, and you know that'll bring in more trouble." Like the NID. "I want hourly updates." Though Hammond didn't actually say it, the 'miss a call and I send in the cavalry' was rather blatantly obvious. "I'll have one of the larger teams on standby, just in case they do move."
Jack agreed, then hung up and called Sam a cab. It arrived a few minutes later, and she left for the mountain. Now all they had to do was sit back and watch.
Jon's Apartment
Of course, Jim having been military, he was well aware that Jack was unlikely as hell to just traipse off on Jim's say-so. He didn't need Sentinel hearing to figure that one out, though he did eavesdrop shamelessly so he knew exactly what they'd be dealing with ... if Jack was going to call in the cavalry and storm the place, Jim wanted to know. Fortunately, Jack seemed to be content with a 'wait and watch' approach.
"Ok, they're just hanging out, waiting to see what we're up to." Jim told the others.
Jon gave an amused snort. He could have told Jim that, but it would lead to awkward questions as to how he could be so certain of Jack's actions and responses, so he didn't say anything about it, just came back out of his room with a small duffel bag (in case they really did leave at some point). "So ... you guys were explaining about Sentinels before they busted in here?"
"Right." Blair said, quickly getting settled on the couch. He started to explain the whole thing ... well, what he knew of it anyway. Despite better than a decade of personal research on the subject, Blair hadn't been able to find much about Sentinels, as most of the ancient tribes that had been host to a Sentinel didn't have a written history, and verbal tales got ... enhanced ... over time, so everything in a verbally-handed-down story had to be taken with about a pound of salt. The only things that Blair had been able to corroborate was that Sentinels seemed to always come into their gifts before physical adulthood, the majority of them before they hit their teens. They all also needed a Guide in order to function successfully. Sentinels and Guides also had spirit animals. Everything beyond that was wild supposition and/or guesswork ... only a small fraction of which had either been confirmed or denied in the last year with Jim.
Jon perked up at the mention of spirit animals ... less because he was thrilled they existed and more because it was a relief to think that him seeing a honking great leopard hadn't been him going flying over the deep edge. "Spirit animal? Wouldn't happen to be a leopard now, would it?" He asked.
"They're different for everyone." Blair explained. "Mine's a wolf, Jim's is a black jaguar, and Xander's is a spotted hyena." Xander couldn't restrain an annoyed grimace. It would be a long, long time before he was anywhere near comfortable with his spirit animal. "And they show up in dreams, and sometimes when you're awake ... generally when something big and/or dangerous is going down." Blair continued. "So if you see yours around, pay attention. If Jim and I had ignored ours a while back, Xander'd be dead now."
That was pretty much the only thing Jon needed to hear to take the whole spirit animal thing seriously. He might think it was a bit crazy ... ok, more than a bit ... but after seven years plus of crazy, he could deal, and despite his older half's habitual whinging and blatant pretending otherwise, he knew better than to write off or ignore things that seemed insane and/or impossible. "So I'm gonna need to hang out with Xander for ... what, the rest of my life, then?"
Xander was surprised that Jon didn't sound pissed-off and/or bitter about essentially being hog-tied to someone he didn't know in order to stay sane. Jim was as well. "You're taking this better than I did when Blair explained it to me." Jim told him.
Jon shrugged. He couldn't exactly explain why he was ok with it without shattering confidentiality into billions of irreparable pieces. "My life is defined by weird." He told them instead. "This is barely a blip on my radar."
Jim was smart enough not to ask why. Whatever the hell was the deal with Jack and 'Murray' and company, Jon was in on it. At some point, there'd have to be some explaining, on both sides, but not yet.
Cheyenne Mountain
Sam, after some six hours of nonstop work, finally sat back away from her computer, contemplating the information she'd put together for a moment before she called Jack.
"Colonel? I've got the information you wanted." She said into the phone when Jack answered. "Ellison's the real deal. Solid and incorruptible as they come, if his record's any indication. Blair's is more eclectic. He's been on every continent save Antarctica, mostly with his mother when he was a kid. Smart enough to give Daniel and I a run for our money ... he was in college at sixteen." She continued with a more detailed run-down of both men's lives up to now.
"And the kid?" Jack wanted to know.
"More or less a massive blank. There's almost nothing in the system about his hometown, except that it exists, and its census numbers. The latter of which I had to dig pretty damn far to find. Birth certificate for the kid under Alexander Harris, and school reports up to last year. Fairly bright ... not Blair's level, but better than average in most areas, if only just, going by his grades and the classes he's in. Only other thing we've got is a file on him with the LAPD. Poor kid was evidently kidnapped and roughed up ... explains the splints and remnants of bruising. Hospital records corroborate that ... whatever the hell happened, it was ugly. Kid got torn up pretty bad. Here's where it gets weird, though. Ellison and Sandburg are the ones that found him. They were on a layover between flights, heading back to Cascade from Peru ... I'm still digging to find out why ... and evidently decided to take a drive while they waited."
Jack frowned, though Sam couldn't see it. That was odd, and very serendipitous timing. Not even his strong suspicion that Jim was a Sentinel explained that. Could it have been a setup of some sort? Jack shook that thought away almost immediately, remembering Jim putting himself between Xander and SG-1. No ... whatever was going on there, Jim hadn't set the kid up for something. "Thanks Sam ... lemme know if you dig anything else up."
"Will do, Colonel." Sam said, then hung up. She eyed the screen again. What she'd found out had her thinking that things were actually ok. Jim was ... well, a lot like Jack, actually. Both were sarcastic, bullheaded Alpha males, for one. And both took duty deadly seriously, any verbal snarkery aside. The number of people who would have even tried to complete their given mission under the circumstances Jim had found himself in was incredibly small ... that he succeeded, and held the area against drug runners for a year and a half with nothing but native tribesmen and their weapons for assistance was right up there with some of the feats that SG-1 had pulled off in her mind.
Half an hour later, the final bits of information had finally come through, and Sam was staring at the computer in disbelieving confusion. Jim was Xander's father? From the hospital and LAPD reports, this had only come to light after the kid had been in the hospital for a day. Jim had immediately gotten himself set up as Xander's guardian, which ran all sorts of red flags for Sam, and had resulted in her investigating Xander's other parents. There was almost as little information on them as there had been on Xander. Jessica had the most, with a full file from birth to her early twenties, at which point she'd moved to Sunnydale and completely fallen off the radar. Xander's apparent stepfather (there were no adoption records) was as big a mystery as Xander himself ... only a birth certificate, high school diploma, and marriage license proved he existed. The speed with which Jessica had agreed to let Jim 'have' Xander pointed to either abuse or blackmail, and Sam was leaning more towards the former than the latter.
She passed that information on to Jack, and to Hammond, and let the two of them decide what they were going to do about it.
At about that time, Daniel had finally dug up all the information he could in academic circles regarding both Sentinels and Blair. He found himself very much confused by it, and eventually, they had a conference call with both Sam and Hammond, trying to make sense of the information they'd put together.
"There's virtually nothing about Sunnydale or its residents in any database." Sam said. "I've got a birth certificate for Xander and Tony Harris, a high school diploma and marriage license for Tony as well as a handful of school reports for Xander ... and that's it. No medical, nothing specific. Even Jessica seems to have dropped off the face of the planet once she moved there ... there's her marriage to Tony, and nothing else. Only thing that put Xander back on the radar was getting kidnapped and dragged to LA. Whoever snatched him really worked him over."
"They don't know who?" Jack asked.
"No ... apparently, Xander doesn't remember anything about the attack. It's not all that unusual, especially since he apparently got hit over the head fairly hard at least once." Sam told them.
"And they think Jon's a Sentinel."
"Yes. He can't be, though ... or you'd be one." Sam pointed out.
"Yeah, I know, but how do we explain that to them?"
Hammond finally spoke up. "We may have to ... educate them ... if it can be proved that Sentinels truly exist. We cannot dismiss the possibility that something Loki did forced Jon into being a Sentinel."
"I think we can prove they do exist, sir ... Jim knew that Teal'c wasn't exactly what he looked like. Kept demanding to know what Teal'c was." Jack pointed out.
"Which would indicate he could tell that Teal'c's internal structure isn't the same as a human's." Hammond said.
"Jim won't be a risk. He was a Ranger. He knows the drill. Blair ought to be ok as well. Our biggest worry is going to be Xander. He's just a kid, and kids talk." Jack pointed out.
"If his home life is anything like I suspect it might have been, Colonel, he's more mature than his age would suggest. He's also fairly bright." Sam said. "I'm sure he'll be fine."
"Any chance we can get them to work for us?" Hammond asked.
"Seriously doubtful, sir. Ellison was betrayed by a superior ... he's not going to want to risk that again, I don't think. Jon and Xander might possibly be recruited, but we'd run into the problem of Jack and Jon being under the same roof all the time." Sam said. Jack and Jon were highly uncomfortable around each other, rather understandably ... and besides, Jon needed to build a life separate from Jack's, and this might be the way to do it.
"Very well. They're still in place? I'll be there in half an hour, and we can discuss things with them." Hammond said, and the call ended.
Jon's Apartment
It was just as well that SG-1 hadn't extrapolated Jim's ability to 'hear' the differences in Teal'c's body at close range with an ability to hear conversations at a distance. Jim was having a lot of fun eavesdropping.
"There's someone called Hammond coming in about a half hour to tell us about things." He told Jon. "Want to run a few things by us and blow their minds?"
Jon was severely tempted to do so ... but decided against it. "Nah, just hit 'em with what you overheard when they show up." He said. "They're probably on their way to explain a few things that you picked up on anyway, especially with you wanting to haul me out of here."
"Why do they get a say in where you go?" Xander wanted to know.
"Going to have to wait for them to get here for the explanation to that one." Jon said. "But to put your minds at ease, Hammond is solid as they come. He's backed his people to the hilt from day one, against some pretty heavy odds." This was said more to Jim than the others, though the others would benefit from the knowledge. "The other four are ... well, they're good people." Then, with typical Jack-style mischief, he grinned at the other three. "Let's call out for dinner. It'll arrive about the time Hammond does."
Blair and Xander liked that idea, grinning widely. Jim was only slightly less enthusiastic. The call was made for some pizza, Jon using his knowledge of the people that would be arriving to arrange for pizzas they'd all like. That done, they sat back to wait.
Jim didn't bother asking how Jon knew so much about this Hammond, or why Jack and Jon seemed to be so intertwined in everyone's minds. Clearly, the answer would come, or not, in half an hour. Xander and Blair, of course, were nowhere near as sanguine about the whole thing. Blair paced around for a good ten minutes before Jim grabbed him by the collar and good-naturedly pushed him towards the couch. "Chief, you're going to wear a hole in the floor."
Blair huffed, but then relented with a grin. "Right, sorry. Just nervous."
Jim understood that. He was nervous too ... he was just a lot better at hiding it. He was not at all happy to be dealing with the military again, especially when the folks they were dealing with had 'heavy opposition'. That did not make Jim a happy camper at all, as he was realist enough to know that if the wrong people found out about his senses, he'd be in some very deep trouble very quickly.
Finally, Jim heard a vehicle arrive. He cocked his head and then grinned. "Sounds like your Hammond beat the pizzas here." He said. "They're on their way up."
One good look at Hammond, who led the group up to Jon's apartment (though not after some strenuous objecting from Jack) did much to reassure Jim of at least this one man's level of honesty versus corruption. Whether it was his senses filling him in or just experience, Jim didn't know or really care, but Hammond gave off the air of someone who genuinely cared for the people under his command and did his utmost to see to their well-being.
Hammond, for his part, gave the odd little group a once-over, noting much the same things as Jack and company had seen. Not that he distrusted their judgment, but it was nice to have it verified by his own eyes. A faint smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. "At ease, son." He rather doubted that Jim was even aware that he had instinctively straightened up into something remarkably close to 'at attention'. "It seems we have a bit of an odd situation on our hands here, gentlemen. And one that requires a good bit of explanation, on both sides. I suggest we get to it." The quirk became a full smile when Jim automatically relaxed in reaction to Hammond's 'order'. You could take the man out of the military, but taking the military out of the man didn't always work, even under the circumstances Jim had left the military.
There weren't anything like enough seats for everyone ... there was barely room enough in the small space for the nine people there now as it was, but Hammond took a kitchen chair while Xander, Blair, and Jim shared the couch, with Jon lounging at Xander's feet, feeling oddly unwilling to leave Xander exposed to ... danger? That thought didn't make a damn bit of sense to Jon, given that he knew SG-1 was about as dangerous to Xander as a wet paper towel, but there was a part of him that was insisting that Xander needed to be protected. It made no damn sense, but there you go.
Jack propped himself against a wall, with Sam next to him. Teal'c guarded the door while Daniel joined Jon on the floor, completely unselfconscious thanks to years of doing similar things in his work contacting the various populations (human and otherwise) among the stars.
Before they could do much more than get situated, the pizzas arrived. Xander and Jon both snickered at the looks on SG-1's faces when the pizzas proved to be their favorites. Jack shot Jon a look that was somewhere between disgust and amusement.
"Figured everyone might be hungry after spying on us for hours." Jim said, not quite able to keep the smug look off his face.
Hammond, well used to such hijinks, just shook his head in amusement as everyone grabbed some food. He abstained for the moment, instead pulling some papers out of the briefcase he'd brought with him.
"Gentlemen, I'm going to need you to sign these. They're nondisclosure forms. Everything we discuss tonight is not to be repeated to anyone except those in this room, or anyone we." He indicated SG-1 and himself. "Introduce you to."
Jim didn't so much as blink at the forms, but gave Hammond a look. "It goes both ways." It wasn't a question, or even a comment. It was a demand, backed by a level glare. "You tell no one. I don't care what smoke-and-mirrors job you have to pull with the Pentagon or whoever the hell it is you report to, but you never so much as mention our names. I find out you have, and the four of us will disappear without a trace." Jim had the skill and contacts to pull it off without resorting to Blair's contacts, but adding everyone around the world that Blair knew thanks to his and his mother's travels ... yeah. There'd be no finding the four of them if they went to ground. At least, not by conventional, earth-bound means of searching, but Jim didn't know SG-1 had access to other means of finding them.
To his credit, Hammond took the comment as seriously as it was meant. He'd shielded Teal'c for the last seven years, against people who'd known who and what and where he was. Protecting Jim and the others, when pretty much no one had any idea that Jim was anything special (if Jack was right and Jim was a Sentinel), or where they were at, would be far easier. "You have my word, Captain." Using Jim's old military rank to indicate it was a promise soldier to soldier.
Jim nodded his acceptance, and signed the forms. Blair was quick to follow. Xander took a bit longer, but that was more due to the splints he was still wearing making maneuvering awkward, rather than any reluctance to promise not to spill the beans. That done, they got down to business, with Blair explaining about Sentinels and Guides as he had for Jon, though this time he got interrupted repeatedly by Sam and Daniel, wanting nitty-gritty details. Unfortunately, in many cases, Blair just didn't have them. Finally, Blair wound down, and Jim gave Hammond a look.
At which point Hammond gave Jim and company an exceedingly bare-bones explanation of what SG-1 was and what they did, and who Jon was ... and even then, he only told them what they absolutely needed to know to understand Jon, and their interest in him. Which more or less amounted to 'there are aliens. Teal'c is one. SG-1 plays meet-and-greet. An alien decided to play Frankenstein with Jack's DNA, and Jon is the result'.
When all was said and done, Xander leaned over to give Jon a look. "And here I thought my life had got weird in the last year. You're going to fit right in in Sunnydale." He grinned.
"Why is that?" Sam wanted to know. "What's so special about that town? We couldn't find out much about it."
At which point it became Xander's turn to give a rundown of what's what. Sam openly scoffed at him ... at least until Jim and Blair both backed him up about vampires at least, having met Angel. She eventually had to admit that Angel's description did not fit any alien they'd met so far.
Daniel and Blair got into an enthusiastic discussion about Sentinels, aliens, demons and witchcraft and how the heck it all went together, as well as a heated debate about why Jon was a Sentinel but Jack wasn't. Sam, after her initial scoff at the existence of demons, began to chime in with her opinions as well. Jack, who'd very nearly gone nuclear when Xander explained about Sunnydale (mostly because he admitted that he and a few other teens were fighting the baddies, and kids in the line of fire was a major sore spot), eventually calmed down and watched Blair, Daniel, and Sam geek out with tolerant amusement.
Jon had been initially as upset as Jack, of course, but the more he thought about things, the happier he became. He'd known for a while now that the whole high-school thing wasn't even beginning to work, and that he needed something he could do ... he'd spent entirely too long being a 'man of action'. Sitting on his ass doing nothing was, at this late date, anathema. If he went to Sunnydale ... he'd be part of a team again. Protecting the world, again. And out from under Jack's shadow completely, able to (more or less) become his own person. And it sounded like Xander and company could use the help.
Jon shot a look at Jack, then at Hammond. "I'm going." He said, his voice cutting across the din from the geeks over in the corner.
Jack frowned. "You sure? I thought ... "
"Jack ... high school was a mistake. I can't figure out what the hell I ... we ... were thinking, agreeing with that. I may look sixteen, but ... well, shit. You know how low of a boredom threshold we have." Jon said.
To which Jack had to agree. And as he thought about it ... high school, again, would definitely end up being deadly boring. He was nowhere near as dumb as he liked to pretend he was, and with a couple of Masters' degrees under his belt, high=school-level scholastics would be ... agonizing. "Fair enough." He admitted.
Jon shot Xander a look over his shoulder, then looked at Jack again. "Y'think Frasier could give Xander here a leg up?" He asked the room in general.
Hammond thought about it for all of half a second before nodding. "She could indeed." He agreed. There was the problem of them having to bring Xander into the base, but ... maybe they wouldn't have to. Another location, with Janet bringing her portable healing tools, might serve as well. And he understood where Jon was coming from. It would be months before Xander was healed enough to begin learning to defend himself if things were left to heal normally. If Xander was half as intent on returning to Sunnydale as he seemed, that was going to be completely unacceptable.
Besides, Janet would want to vet Xander herself. She was rather proprietary about the soldiers under her care in general and SG-1 in particular, and Jon was, if not a member of SG-1, as good as. "You'd still need physical therapy, son, but we have access to ways of speeding up the healing process considerably." Hammond told Xander.
Xander looked rather thrilled by that idea. He wanted no part of being stuck sitting on his butt for weeks or months, waiting for everything to heal enough for him to be of use again. "God, please, yes. As long as I don't have to sell you my soul or any such thing." Xander told them.
"Nothing like that. I'll give our medic a call and arrange things for tomorrow." Hammond said. "You'll be staying overnight?"
"That long for sure." Jim said with a nod.
"Very well then. We need to get going, as we have things that need to be dealt with." And lies to tell. Hammond would have a lot of work to cover this little jaunt up, but he was able for it.