Lessons in Keys
A/N: Airwolf belongs to Bellisario and Universal, Stargate: SG-1 is the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. Airwolf is AU (moved ahead about twenty years). Spoilers for SG-1's "Gamekeeper". "Venus" by Shocking Blue. "Down On the Corner" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, lyrics and music by J.C. Fogerty.
~*~*~*~*~
Another day, another alien prison-break. Sam sniped a man with her 'zat as Daniel ducked behind the DHD. Things hadn't gone completely sour with the locals; they were trying to leave people alive to try contact again later. Crossbow bolts whipped overhead as the archaeologist punched in the return sequence with practiced haste.
"Don't know what we did that would cause this level of response," Daniel was muttering as he keyed symbols. "Something about stepping on the high lord's shadow? Didn't seem like there were Polynesian aspects to the culture-"
Thwack.
Sam shook her hand involuntarily at the sting before Daniel slapped his hand onto the DHD's activating gem. Just a graze, she'd be okay to run for the 'Gate as soon as Daniel sent his GDO code-
And the world slid sideways, gray and muzzy.
"More Central American," Daniel seemed to be saying, in the moment before the ground came up hard. "In which case, they probably use poison - Sam!"
Roaring in her ears; dark, muscular arms scooped her up, carried her in a rough bounce toward a shimmering silver-blue circle.
Cold - bright - stars-
Rattle of boots on steel; a familiar shout of "Medic!"
I'm okay, Sir. I just - can't - breathe-
Lights out.
~*~*~*~*~
Familiar tang of iodine and disinfectant; a solid something in her throat. "Gnnrgh."
"Sam?"
"Gnnrgh!"
"Try to relax." Janet's hands checked pulse, brow, pressed cold metal against her chest to listen. "We had to ventilate you for a while."
"Gnnrgh?"
"You apparently got hit with the local equivalent of ephibatine. Neurotoxic knockout and muscular paralysis. I sent the rest of your team off for cookies as soon as I saw you were coming out of it." Snap of latex over skin. "Stay still."
Indescribable unpleasantness, as Dr. Frasier extracted the mass of breathing tubes from her airways. "Gaah...."
"Sam?" Daniel in the doorway, portable electronic keyboard under his arm, three steps ahead of a grinning Colonel with a bag of chocolate-chip cookies and an empty-handed, stoically-relieved Jaffa. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize they might be poisoned-"
"S'okay," Sam croaked. Sipped the water Janet offered, tried again. "It's okay, Daniel. You knew when it mattered." Neurotoxin. Brr. Daniel had probably shaved precious minutes off Janet's search for answers from her unconscious body.
And with neurotoxins, seconds counted.
"So I tell him, but does he listen? Nooo." Colonel O'Neill plopped himself into the SG-1 chair, grinning at her over a steaming mug that wafted the ambrosial scent of fresh-brewed coffee. "How you doing, Major?"
"Hangover." Her brain felt full of fuzz, and her stomach most definitely did not want to move. At all. "Going back?"
"Not 'til we give 'em some time to cool down." Dark eyes rolled. "Say, a few months."
She worked that through the fuzz for a moment, frowned. "Sir... why would we go back?"
"The weapons they use indicate some familiarity with the Goa'uld," Teal'c noted, taking up position at the end of her cot. "The toxin that felled you might have slowed a Jaffa enough to slay."
"Oh." Huh. Maybe they ought to add tranq darts to the regular arms roster....
"Major?"
"Sir?" She blinked; made a concerted effort to get her thoughts in order.
"Just wondering how you and the Rock Wonder here got out of that locked cell," O'Neill leaned back in his chair. "Could've sworn Daniel was hog-tied well enough to keep him out of a pyramid."
"Jack!"
"Hey. When it's you and artifacts, you could give Houdini lessons." The grin took a serious edge. "So? Major?"
"Um..." She slid a covert glance Daniel's way, took in his fidget as he sat on the edge of her bed. "I found someone willing to give me a few pointers." Just as soon as she'd figured out just who had broken into Janet's stash of Oreos to snare that damn bouncing yellow koningul.
The colonel looked at her. Looked at Daniel. Looked back at her. Sighed. "All right, I give up. Daniel - where the hell did you learn to pick locks?"
Daniel licked his lips. Glanced away.
"Danny...."
"No, it's all right," the archaeologist said hastily. "It's just... I haven't thought about them in a while." He set the keyboard down on white sheets, hugged himself as he thought. "It was a - a temporary home. While they were... looking for my grandfather."
~*~*~*~*~
Upstate New York. Almost thirty years ago.
Dark. A big house, but outside of the small circle of light where they stood inside the front door, it was dark.
"...Saying it's a freak accident...."
The strangers were speaking English, like his parents sometimes did; but a different English, fast and softened and hard to make out. Even if he'd wanted to make it out.
And he didn't want to. He wanted-
Mommy!
But she wasn't here. She wasn't ever going to be here, never again....
"...Coverstone falls.... accident?" The cool tone of those words cut through despair, drew his gaze toward the strange strawberry-blonde woman with fierce blue eyes. She was dressed like he'd seen some of the tourists in Cairo, the few times his parents had wandered through hotels in the early morning; coat thrown over a soft cotton robe, belted tight where Egyptian robes flowed loose.
"...NYPD," grumbled the rough hands holding him. "...Museum director...."
That man Daniel remembered, and flinched, gripping his satchel tighter. The director had wanted to take it away, and he'd promised Mother he'd never lose it. He'd promised.
Why hadn't she promised he wouldn't lose her?
But now there was a softening in the woman's smile, unlike the cold sternness of her dark-haired husband, and she gathered him up under her coat with a quiet shhh of breath. "Poor little one...."
And it was warm, and his mother wouldn't mind if he just stayed here, just for a minute, maybe?
"What's your name, little one?"
Daniel snuck a quick glance at her, looked back at the patterned carpet. Greek key? Or were there Celtic aspects in the design; his parents had been working on some traces of continental European influence in Middle Kingdom painting....
The rough-handed stranger rumbled something else, handed over a rustle of paper. Another.
Stepped out the door, and was gone.
No!
He pushed against the strange woman's arms; met unexpected strength. The rough man was a stranger, but he hadn't hurt - not like the man with dark hair might hurt-
"You might as well come down, Michael," the blonde woman called in German. "Meet Daniel."
He quit struggling as the teenager came into view; eyes blue and sharp as the woman's, height that was just beginning to echo the dark, cold man behind him.
And spots.
He remembered the day his parents had taken him to a brisk English doctor; remembered the itchy sore they had forbidden him to scratch. The sore meant to fight the spots, that had killed Abdullah's grandfather and Jumana's sister and so many others in the past.
Don't they know? Aren't they afraid?
"You're all spots," he whispered. "Are you going to die, too?"
Michael stopped on the stairs, cocked his head to the side. "It's chicken pox," he answered in rough-edged German. As if he were puzzled. As if he truly didn't know. "No one dies from chicken pox."
"The Great Pox isn't in America anymore, Daniel," Michael's mother smiled. "You saw that in Egypt, yes? People who'd survived the Great Pox?"
"Yes." He didn't quite dare look away from spotted skin. "And the cemeteries-"
"Take him upstairs and put him to bed," the dark-haired man said brusquely. "I've got to finish packing."
~*~*~*~*~
And his parents smiled, and the stone fell; slowly, so slowly, scraping skin from his fingertips-
Nooo!
Daniel scrabbled for stone; met a hot arm instead.
What?
"Shhh." Warm hands held his as he thrashed, tangling the sheets. "Daniel. Daniel, you're all right. Come on, kid, wake up...."
"No!" Dark, why was it dark? It should have been light, and afternoon, and sun painting falling stone-
"Michael?" Silent, so silent, Mrs. Wolfe moved; there in the doorway, a gleam of steel in her grip. "Daniel?"
"We're all right." Michael's fingers chafed his. "I think we're all right. Bad dream, right? Just a bad dream...."
Metal on wood; a snap of light on, throwing gold glints off Mrs. Wolfe's unbound hair. Daniel winced away from the light, but not before he saw- "Why do you have a gun?"
"Habit. A good habit. Sometimes." She laid the killing weapon aside, gathered him up in a drift of cotton robes. "Do you want to talk about it?"
The dream. The reality. The stone falling, and his parents gone-
Mute, Daniel shook his head.
"Well." She rocked him on her lap, smoothing back tear-wet strands of hair. "Do you see that track of stars out there?"
"Oh, not the star-stories," Michael murmured, shifting away from the bed.
"Keep it up and you can tell this one, Michael."
But she didn't sound angry, and Daniel was able to look out the window. The Milky Way was bright as she rocked him, a white river through the sky. "Nut," he whispered. "In the morning, she gives birth to the sun."
"I haven't heard that story." Mrs. Wolfe glanced up, gazed back at him with a smile. "But a long time ago, my grandmother told me, there was a corn mill in the south. And when the people came to fill it in the morning, they found someone was stealing the meal in the night. And when they searched the ground for tracks, they found the spoor of a huge, fierce hound...."
~*~*~*~*~
"...And when they sprang out, the hound ran off howling toward the North, dropping meal from his mouth as he ran. And to this day we see that white trail in the night sky, Where-The-Dog-Ran."
Daniel blinked at sunlight shimmering through the curtained window; bright, but somehow thin. Not like Egypt, where Ra's rays hit like a hammer, pounding morning air to forge heat. Was it morning already?
Breakfast was... interesting.
Pancakes. Sort of like what his parents made sometimes on a dig; only these were lighter, fluffier, with a sweet-sour tang too mild to be sour cream. What was buttermilk?
And bacon? They actually ate bacon? That was... rude. Around most people. Really, really rude; his parents wouldn't let him call anyone a pig. It was an offense to any child of Allah in Egypt.
But this wasn't Egypt. Wouldn't ever be Egypt. Too cold. Too wet. Too... different.
And they weren't trying to be rude. Really. They were just - kind of - well - tourists.
It's sort of like a hotel, Daniel thought, wandering through room after carpeted room. Glass sculptures, painted walls, fine porcelains; yes, very like one of the hotels his parents sometimes visited in Cairo.
Only there were books. Books everywhere.
Daniel managed to get one off a shelf, puzzled through descriptions of strange places and even stranger creatures. Where was Lake Baikal? What were freshwater seals? Black and white pictures of what looked like tigers in snow - who'd made that up?
He put the book on Siberia back on the shelf. Tigers in snow... too weird.
Almost as weird as the huge, black, four-legged thing standing in the next room.
It didn't look like a table. Too high. Too thick. And when he rapped on the side, it sounded hollow.
If it's hollow, it opens. Curious hands felt, poked, pried-
Whoa!
A slab of black lifted up, uncovering a toothy grin of ivory and ebony. Daniel reached out, tapped one gleaming slab.
Ting.
Flinched back. Looked around. No screams. No sighs. No strident adult "Don't touch!"
Pressed down again.
Ting. Tang. Tung!
And a red-spotted Michael lounging in the doorway, one blond brow hiked in interest.
Crash!
"I- I'm s-sorry-"
"It's all right." Odd; Michael seemed more amused than upset. Like his parents when he brought them a bone - a far cry from the ordinary adult reaction of horror and disgust. "I didn't know you played."
"P-played?" Sometimes he did, with some of the children from a village near an excavation, but there wasn't anyone else here.
The other blond brow went up. "The piano."
Oh, played. Like the tomb dancers, playing sistrums. "This is a piano?" Daniel pried the black slab back open, looked over black and white teeth. "What's it do?"
Michael blinked. Started to say something. Shook his head. "Sit down. I'll show you."
Sit down? Oh! There was a stool tucked under the piano; he'd thought it was just another piece of this not-quite-a-table. Michael dragged it out, sat, stretched itchy fingers. Drew brows together in concentration.
And music spilled out of ivory.
A slow rise of notes; a swifter fall. Simple and sweet; though like everything else here, vaguely alien. There were different notes than Egyptian music, different ways they fit together, far different patterns before Michael drew to an elegant close.
Blue eyes glanced down at him. Flicked around the room. Spread fingers over the keys.
Winked.
Yipe!
It was a torrent of sound; a hard, steady beat that sang of weapons of crystal, darkness and night.
A goddess on a mountain top,
Was burning like a silver flame.
The summit of beauty she was,
And Venus was her name.
But it was about a goddess he knew, and kind of interesting, and eventually Daniel got up the nerve to join in. Even if he wasn't getting all the English words right.
She's got it; yeah, baby, she's got it.
Well, I'm your Venus, I'm your fire,
Your desire.
~*~*~*~*~
Down on the corner, out in the street,
Willy and the Poorboys are playin',
Bring a nickel, tap your feet.
Daniel let his hands drop off the keys after the last faltering note, feeling shoulders stiff in ways they'd never been after brushing off dirt from a site. "That's hard."
"Takes practice," Michael sighed. "And practice, and practice, and practice...." A smile bent his lips as Daniel's stomach rumbled. "Sounds like time for a break."
Break. Like the ropes had, dropping the stone....
"Daniel?"
Daniel's gaze skittered away from that curious gaze. "Not hungry."
A red-spotted brow lifted at a second rumble. "Well, I am." The teenager leaned closer, gave him a sly wink. "I hear there's a batch of chocolate chip cookies in the vicinity that needs a thorough investigation." He straightened. "And since my mother asked me to keep an eye on you... mind coming with me?"
Daniel licked his lips. He wasn't hungry. He wasn't.
Cookies?
No. Not even for cookies.
But Mrs. Wolfe was nice. Maybe he should go with Michael. "Okay."
Michael stood, pointed dramatically. "And forth we venture, on the great kitchen expedition."
"But we ate over there," Daniel objected, jogging in a long-legged wake. "Why is this house so big?"
"Politics."
Which didn't make any sense at all. "My mother-" Daniel swallowed. "My mother says polite people don't talk about politics."
Michael hmphed. "Well, we're not very polite around here. Unless you count polite society. Now there's an oxymoron for you. The things I've heard these people say to each other at parties, even when they knew I spoke their language...." He shook his head. "And they call operatives uncivilized."
"What's an operative?"
The teenager cast a glance his way. "Tell you when you're older."
"Everybody says that," Daniel grumbled, catching himself on the doorway as his feet skidded on polished tile. Wow. This was a kitchen? You could fit Jumana's ovens in here!
"Hold up." A spotted hand held him back. "Hmmm... Mrs. Loring's running late today."
"Who?" Daniel peered around a jean-clad leg.
"Shh!" Michael drew him behind a tall cabinet, dropping into a crouch to peer around the corner.
Daniel ducked to peer out, caught a blurry glimpse of gray hair over a blue dress. Probably a woman. This far away, he couldn't tell without his glasses.
And his glasses were long gone, dropped somewhere in an echo of falling stone.
Michael's fingers were firm on his shoulder, holding him to the present. "Just as well society frowns on hosting parties when your only son's all spots," the teenager murmured. "Otherwise, this place would be a madhouse." He cocked an ear toward the far end of the kitchen; relaxed. "We're clear."
Daniel followed in his confident wake, only to draw up short when he saw the cookie jar. The locked cookie jar.
Locks mean someone doesn't want you to go there, his mother had said.
Maybe Michael's mother had never told him that. The teenager had a solid grip on the padlock, a speculative gleam in his blue eyes, and a weird bit of twisted wire in his hand. "Are you sure we're supposed to be doing this?" Daniel asked warily.
"Oh, absolutely." The teenager inserted his wire into the bottom of the lock. "My mother's very into reward-based learning."
Whatever that meant. "But it's locked."
"That's the point." The hand holding the wire wiggled, twisted-
Click.
The rich scent of chocolate and baked sugar wafted free as Michael took off the open lock. He lifted out a cookie, fit the lid back down, and clicked the lock back on. Chewed chocolate and crumbly cookie, a contented smile creasing his face. "If you can get it open, you can have a cookie. If you want one."
Cookie.
But he'd said he wasn't hungry.
Cookie.
But his mother said....
Cookie?
She didn't say he shouldn't open a lock.
Daniel reached for the padlock, hesitated. "But I don't know how."
"It's not that hard." Michael's tone was quiet, matter-of-fact. He waved toward a stool, so they could both get up to eye level with the lock. "Come on, let me show you."
It took a fumbling, frustrating, tear-wracked hour, but Daniel finally got his cookie.
~*~*~*~*~
Daniel leaned against the roof ridgeline, still a little uncertain if being up here was such a great idea. "So what are you doing?"
Michael aimed binoculars toward the lighted house and pool a mile away, peered through the fading sunset. "Brushing up on lip-reading and investigating potential escape routes for future use." He grinned at an echoing splash. "And checking out the girls in bikinis."
Girls? In skimpy bathing suits? "Eww!"
"I grant you they're easier to deal with at a distance," Michael admitted. "You never know what they're thinking." A wry waggle of blond brows. "But if you watch long enough, you know who's the most likely to shriek when you drop an ice cube down the back of her dress."
"Why would you want to do that?" Ice was for drinking. Or keeping milk cool.
"It's fun?"
Daniel rolled his eyes. They weren't fun at all if you couldn't see them. But he knew better than to ask for the binoculars. They just wouldn't work. They never did, without glasses.
Michael tilted his head a little, focused with the small knob on top of the binoculars. "Oh, your momma don't dance and your daddy don't rock and roll...."
Oh, boy.
What's that bird doing?
Agile and speckled brown, tail a jaunty flip of feathers. Didn't look quite like those he'd seen in Egypt. Closer to something he'd seen in London, once; a sparrow? Maybe that was it.
It was pecking at something thin and green on the roof. A caterpillar? Kind of like those he'd seen on the edge of the Nile, eating crops. Boy, someone was going to be mad that was loose.
But the bird had already taken care of it, breaking the squirmy body into bite-sized chunks before gulping them down. It fluttered back into the air, swooped down toward the other end of the house.
Weird, Daniel thought, following absently. Like it was going somewhere on purpose.
Well out of hearing of the party, Daniel sat down by a white square on the shingles, panting. This was a big house.
But he got back to his knees and crawled forward, toward the small hole under the edge of the roof, just above the brass gutter. The bird had scooted in there, he was sure of it.
Wow. There was a nest in there? He could hear a little chirping....
No, that was creaking.
No, that was cracking-
He couldn't scream.
~*~*~*~*~
"Daniel."
Daniel held onto splintery wood, felt it growing slick and slippery as he swayed over the abyss. It hurt... oh gods, it hurt, and he was going to fall....
"Daniel!"
And maybe he should fall, and stop, and it would stop hurting-
"Daniel, listen to me!"
Crack. Daniel gulped. "Mi...chael...."
"Mom's going to kill me," the teenager muttered, squirming along the broken edge of the roof on his stomach. "Thought we had this marked - Daniel, you hang on. You hear me? Hang on."
"Can't...."
"Yes, you can." Michael's tone left no room for argument. He flattened himself against torn black shingles, arms a white blur in the gathering night. "Just one more minute. Hang on one more minute."
One minute. Sixty seconds. Maybe.... "One one-thousand, t-t-two one-thousand-"
"Smart aleck," came the grumble from the darkness. But it was a close grumble; how had Michael gotten so close? "Stay calm. I'm going to grab onto you. Don't move."
Sweaty skin against his ribs. "Okay," Michael breathed. "I'm going to count to three, and you're going to let go. One, two-"
"No!"
"Daniel. I won't let you fall. I promise. Let go."
Craaack-
And arms yanked him up, tearing skin on splintered wood, tumbling them both in a gasping heap on the asphalt scrape of shingles.
Michael swore under his breath. "Ow...."
"Michael!" A swift patter of footsteps over the roof; a blur of white skirts heading their way. "I heard the trim cracking... Daniel!"
"Oh, damn," Michael muttered. "Mom - I can explain-"
Ariella cleared her throat.
"Okay, maybe I can't. But he was right there...."
"Followed the bird," Daniel sniffled. Everything hurt.
"The wren's nest. Yes; Michael found it when we moved in." Ariella's hands were patting him over, checking skin and bone before she hauled him into a swift embrace. "But we were going to have this part of the roof replaced. It's dangerous to be over here." She pointed the white square taped to the shingles. "Didn't you see the sign?"
"Sign?" Oh, so those black squiggles were letters. "It's too far away." He burst into tears. It was his fault after all....
"Come on," Ariella said softly, picking him up. "Let's get you somewhere warm." As they walked back toward the ladder, her gaze shifted to her son. "As for you-"
Picking out a splinter, Michael winced. "I'm in trouble, aren't I."
"You're going to help me find an optometrist."
Head snuggled into her shoulder, Daniel frowned. "What's a 'tometrist?"
~*~*~*~*~
Glasses. Daniel took them off, nudged them back on. His parents had had them. The pictures of his grandmother had them. He'd had them, since his parents thought he'd fallen down one shaft too many. But he'd never imagined there was a doctor just for glasses.
Wow. Those green things on the trees are leaves!
And he could read, without holding books up to his nose. That was cool.
"Don't go up on the roof, don't sneak into the culvert, don't go out of sight of the house," Michael was muttering, tracing his finger down a long list Ariella had presented him with breakfast. "I suppose it could be worse. She might have written it on my hand."
Daniel frowned at the page covered in fine print. "I don't think it would have fit."
"That's not humorous, Daniel."
Whatever that meant. "Music?" he asked hopefully.
"Why not." Michael grinned as he set up the piano. "You have to be the only person I've ever met who enjoys 'Chopsticks'."
~*~*~*~*~
"-So the rest of the week was pretty quiet," Daniel concluded, leaning back in his infirmary chair. "Well, if you don't count the pool incident. And the catapult."
"Pool incident?" the colonel pounced, before Sam could get a word in.
"Ah... maybe some other time, Jack."
Sam sat there a moment, trying to correlate the past hour's host of hair-raising details with the mild-mannered archaeologist she knew. So many questions she wanted to ask. Better start with the easy one. "So Michael got you started on piano?"
"Yeah." The archaeologist switched on the keyboard. "Went over this one every day I was there. I didn't really get it down until a lot later, but he never complained."
...You don't need a penny just to hang around,
But if you've got a nickel, won't you lay your money down?
Over on the corner there's a happy noise,
People come from all around to watch the magic boy.
Down on the corner, out in the street,
Willy and the Poorboys are playin',
Bring a nickel, tap your feet.
~*~*~*~*~
"So what do you think, Sir?" Sam asked guardedly, after their archaeologist had headed off to finish the latest round of translations.
"Think he's lucky he got out of there when he did," O'Neill said flatly.
"Daniel Jackson believes Mrs. Wolfe was a considerate caretaker," Teal'c noted.
"Lots of languages, lots of money, and parents that teach you how to pick locks?" The colonel shook his head. "Two words, Teal'c. Organized crime."
"Or secret agents," Sam noted. "He did say 'operative'."
Jack frowned. "Yeah, but he wasn't sure."
"Daniel, not sure about a word, Sir?" Sam raised a skeptical brow. "And why would someone in organized crime take in an orphan?"
"What is a secret agent, O'Neill?"
"A spy. Like the Tok'ra. Only with more style," Jack said dryly. "Question is, Carter, why would a spy take in an orphan?"
That she did have an answer for. "Ever looked at his file, Sir?"
"Yeah. Some." Jack shrugged. "Didn't want to pry into his past. Since he doesn't like to talk about it."
"Maybe he's got a reason," Sam said frankly. "If you look close, there's plenty in there on his foster parents. But when it comes to his biological family, things get pretty sketchy."
"As in-?"
"As in," she affirmed. "They were in the Middle East, Sir. And we've always wanted information out of there. Maybe somebody got careless."
"Ouch." The colonel stretched a kink out of his back as he stood. "Then it's a good thing Child Services did take him out of there, Carter. Can you see our Danny as a spy?"
Talent with locks, Sam thought. Definite talent for languages. Survival skills that had kept him alive over a year on Abydos, even before Jack had taken him in hand to bring him up to military speed. The ability to negotiate with just about anybody or anything. And an innocent look that wouldn't quit.
Naah.