Sorry for the slower posting lately. My always amazing beta had some computer issues.
I am taking care of the little Jacob for now. I am still trying to get the older Jacob cleared to use the sarcophagus. It takes a whole lot of paperwork to get that done. If you work for the SGC, and are mortally injured whilst doing official work, they just pop you in, assuming you haven't overdone your once per year maximum. For family members of the SGC it's possible, it just takes a lot of work. There could be special circumstances if he was actually near death (which, from what I can tell, involves the General and Janet as the head doctor both giving the go ahead). But apparently, although he's sick, he's just not that sick. So we have to watch him suffer.
"Dan'yel, there is something different about Jacob," I say. My husband is translating something at the kitchen table while I play with the kids in the living room. Naima is building a tower, and knocking it down while Jacob has his important "tummy time".
"Is he sick?" Dan'yel asks.
"No, it's just… he shouldn't be able to do all the things that he can do. At least, not yet."
"Sha'uri, you know that babies develop in all kinds of different ways. Just because one baby did things one way doesn't meant that it's the right way to do it, or the only way to do it."
"I know all that, Dan'yel, but this is way more than sped-up development."
"Come on, just because Naima was a little bit slower at that age than he is doesn't mean there is anything wrong with her. She's fine now, right? Sixteen months old, and walking and talking. So, Jacob is a little bit faster than her. In the big picture, what difference is a couple of months going to make?"
"That's not what this is about. I'm worried about Jacob," I say, and it sounds a little ridiculous in my own ears. "Dan'yel, he's a month old, and he's already sort of crawling."
"So," Dan'yel says with a shrug.
"So, babies aren't supposed to do that until they are three or four months old."
"So, maybe Jacob is gifted. He is Sam's baby; I wouldn't find that particularly surprising."
"Well, Naima is your baby, so by that logic she should already speak a dozen languages," I protest.
"So this is about the difference between their development then?"
I let out a long sigh, "No, it's not. He's big, too. I mean, he's a monster for a month-old. He's wearing six-month-old clothing."
"That happens, too," Dan'yel says, "When I was in foster care, I knew these two sisters, they were two years apart, but they used to share clothes. They were the exact same size."
"But they weren't babies."
"Oh, I don't know, I think it started when they were pretty young."
"Maybe your right, and I am just worrying about nothing," I mutter, even though a part of me remains unconvinced.
Jacob looks me in the eye, and smiles, as he crawls toward me.
"I just worry about him, because as far as we know he is the first baby ever born to two Goa'uld hosts. Sometimes, I just worry that there are some consequences to that."
Dan'yel comes over next to me on the floor, and kisses my forehead, "Jacob is fine. No matter how he came into existence, he is just fine right now. Aren't you, little man?" he asks, laying down on the floor and pulling Jacob above him. But I still know that something is wrong. He shouldn't be able to do that yet. There is no way a one month old's neck should be strong enough to support himself when he is being held by the armpits. This is just so wrong.
"Me, Daddy!" Naima says pulling on his elbow.
"Right, your turn," Dan'yel says handing the baby to me.
Three weeks later
When I hear crying at one in the morning, I head into Naima's room instead of Jacob's. That doesn't exactly seem like the logical choice, I mean you would think it was the two month old instead of the one year old. But when Naima was little, I made countless middle-of-the-night trips into her room. I've yet to make one into Jacob's, not even the night we brought him home from the hospital. And when you wake up at one in the morning. your body is pretty much on auto pilot, so it just went were I normally did.
Of course, when I see my little girl sleeping, I realize the mistake and head into Jacob's room. He's standing, unstably hanging onto the bars of his crib. He's crying with all that he's worth, and his eyes look terrified.
"Hey, Jacob, it's ok," I say, picking him up.
He buries his head in my shoulder, and continues to cry. I give him a little bounce that used to calm Naima down. Jacob's needed surprisingly little calming down in his life. The bouncing isn't working so I check his diaper. Nothing. I head out to the kitchen and make him a bottle. He won't even take it into his mouth.
"What's wrong, little man?" I ask.
"'eams," he sobs.
"What?" I ask, no way he just talked to me.
"'eams," he says again.
"Dreams? What are you dreaming about?" I ask.
"Oold," he says.
"You had a dream about the Goa'uld?" I ask.
"Oold 'ad," he mutters.
He's seven weeks old, and he just gave me a two world sentence. "It's ok, the Goa'uld can't get you here," I say.
I rock with him, and talk with him until he falls asleep. But I can't bear to lay down a baby who just has a nightmare about the Goa'uld, so I take him into bed with Dan'yel and I.
The next morning, I hear Dan'yel talking to Jacob as he gargles.
"Morning," I say.
"Our bed seems to have a stowaway," he says with a smile.
"He had a nightmare," I say.
"He's a baby, Sha'uri," he reminds me.
"I know."
"So how do you know that he had a nightmare?"
"He told me so," I say.
Dan'yel laughs, "Were you talking to Sha'uri, huh? Did you learn to talk?"
"'alk, Da," he says.
"What?" Dan'yel says.
"'alk, Da!" he exclaims.
"It's got to be babbling," Dan'yel says.
"Here is the thing, if it was just babbling it would still be months early," I say.
"But it can't be…" he says.
"Dan'yel, we have to take him to the infirmary. He's growing too fast," I tell him.
"You're right, Sha'uri, I should have done this weeks ago when you first told me that something was wrong," he says guiltily.
"It's ok, we're going to take care of it now," I say gently.
"Little man, you are not so terribly little," he says gently to the baby.
"I'm worried about the fact that he told me he was dreaming about the Goa'uld," I say, "We never talk about these things in front of the kids, so how did he know?"
"Are you sure that he says Goa'uld?" Dan'yel asks.
"Oold," Jacob says. "'ad oold," he adds. And I get the feeling that he is trying to warn us.
"Yes, the Goa'uld are very bad," Dan'yel agrees, trying to calm him. "I'll go get him dressed, you want to get Naima?" he says to me.
"Deal," I say.
I'm incredibly frustrated right now. I thought it was hard to get my husband to listen to my instinct that there was something wrong, but it was nothing compared to trying to convince medical people to listen. They have been shoving us to nurse after nurse. Finally, Janet comes in and looks at him.
"That's not Jacob, is it?" she asks, confused.
"Yes!" I exclaim.
"Not Sam's Jacob?" she repeats.
"Yes, it is," I say.
"Oh, my God. He's…"
"Not quite two months, but he's talking and wearing 1T clothes."
"Ok, I'm going to take some blood," she says.
"'K, oc'or," Jacob says, and then he sticks out his arm, exposing his vein.
Janet glances at me with panic in her eyes.
"I know," I say.
Jacob is standing grabbing onto my knees, and babbling. I'm not sure what percentage of what he says is real words, and what is just babbling.
"Ma, ma 'er?" he suddenly asks.
"What?" I ask.
"Ma, 'ammy, 'er?" he asks.
"Yes, your mom is Sam, and she is here," I say.
"Ee'er! Ee'er!" he says getting so excited that claps his hands. That causes his hands to leave my knees, and he falls down.
"You want to see your mom?" I ask.
He nods.
"You can't do that. Your Mommy is sick," I say.
He searches my face.
"No," he says, shaking his head, "Ma oold."
My heart stops. How did he know that?
He tilts his head at me, and tries to climb up on my lap. I hold him tight, thinking that he wants me to comfort him.
"'Der 'der," he says. The baby is trying to comfort me!
"Sha'uri," Janet says, "We got the results of the blood test. He has nanites in his blood rapidly aging him. I need to get him into a room and start exposing him to different waves. It might take some time to find the right frequency, but I think we can fix this."
"And will this help the nightmares?" I ask.
"I don't know, that could have just been a fluke, Sha'uri. We'll worry about them if the continue," Janet says.
"Ok, I can sit with him?" I ask.
"Yes. I'll get some books or something; it could be hours."
"Can I call Dan'yel to bring some things from home?"
"Sure," she says, "You can use the phone in my office, and then you can head into isolation room one."
Twenty minutes later, Dan'yel comes in and sits down next to me. He opens up a bag, and sets it on the floor.
"Have they got it yet?" he asks.
"No, they come in every ten minutes to check the ones in the petri dish. They figure that if those ones are affected, the ones in him will be too. They haven't found the right frequency yet, but they have only tried twenty out of the thousands of combinations."
"Right, I told Jacob and Sam."
"He asked to see her," I whisper.
"What?" Dan'yel asks in shock.
"He knows she has a Goa'uld in her, and that she's here."
"We're not exposing that little boy to her," he says firmly, but still in a whisper.
"I know, of course not, but he knows things that he shouldn't know," I say.
"Yeah, we'll deal with this when he is growing at a normal rate," he says with a sigh.
It is the next day in the afternoon when the petri dish finally shows dead nanites. They draw his blood a few times after that just to make sure. And they expose him to the frequency for another 24 hours just to be sure. But the next day I am taking home with me a toddler. Developmentally, he will be close to my own daughter, even though he is more than a year younger.
I hear a scream in the night. I rush into Jacob's room. He stares at me with eyes of terror. "Goa'uld," he says.
Out of the frying pan, and into the fire. What exactly is in this little boy's brain?