Disclaimer: What do you think? (By the way, I suggest everyone go to a site
called The Alpha Gate Fanfiction Archive, go to general fiction, humor,
story index, 'd' titles and go to 'the Drink'. If you love to laugh, you
will love this.
Prodigal Son...er...Daughter
Chapter Five
I really don't get why they don't like me. I'm a likeable person. Everyone in my dimension loves me...well, except the Goa'uld...who pretty much comprise the entire planet...okay, bad example.
This is what Teal'la thought to herself as she crawled commando style through the ceiling space towards the debriefing room, where she knew they were talking about her. What was so bad about her being in on it, anyway?
I mean, the only thing there was to tell was that she was a living experiment made up of samples of their genetic material...not that big a deal...right?
She settled herself quietly next to the vent, and placed her elbows on either side of it, listening carefully as they continued the conversation that had just begun.
"—Found several places in her genetic coding that were surprisingly consistent with that of...well, the SG1 team." said Janet, a projection thrown onto the screen behind her.
There was a short silence.
"What, you mean like, similar to?" asked Daniel, swiveling his chair from side to side, like he did at almost every briefing. Above them, Teal'la smirked.
~Come on, Daniel, you know better, you were the one who came up with the idea.~ Teal'la thought as she listened.
"No, I mean exactly the same."
A longer silence.
"I fail to understand how this is possible." Teal'c said.
"Yeah, me too." Jack agreed almost instantly. Teal'la smiled, shaking her head. Poor Jack.
"Lots of Genetic manipulation, but that's not even the most interesting part." Janet continued, and in her not-quite-cozy hiding place, Teal'la blinked. What else was there to know? Janet used a laser pen to point to places on her projection. "These blocks here...here, and here...those are all Goa'uld."
There was a long moment of silence, in which Teal'la wondered if they knew she was there and were playing a practical joke on her. This notion quickly passed however and she blinked, several times. She felt a rush of panic. Her? A Goa'uld? No fucking way.
"She's a Goa'uld-Human Hybrid?" Carter asked, disbelief sounding in her voice.
"It's not just that, Major. She carries a Goa'uld symbiote."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone, doc. We have Goa'uld detectors. The alarms would have gone off if she was carrying one. You must have picked up someone else's file or something." Jack cut in, sure that he had caught a flaw in Janet's sadistic little practical joke. She looked at him.
"No, I definitely have the right file, but I do have a theory about the Goa'uld detectors. We programmed them to sense active Goa'ulds, or Goa'ulds that were influencing their hosts. The reason that we didn't detect hers is because it's dormant." Janet lectured, and Jack stared, sure that she must be joking. Goa'ulds, sleeping or no, did not let their hosts have as much fun as Teal'la had been having. He certainly didn't know any that like pumpkin cheesecake.
...
Not that he was on a first name basis with any.
"The symbiote is actually attached to her, though, I've never seen anything like this. It's like she was born this way—"
"Uh," interrupted Daniel, and everyone looked at him. "For the record, she wasn't born, she was created."
There was a moment of silence, in which everyone except Teal'c stared incredulously at him. Teal'la waited for their reactions while at the same time contemplating the new information she had just assimilated.
"How do you know that, Dr. Jackson?" asked General Hammond. Teal'c answered for him.
"Teal'la informed us of this herself, in the mess hall." he supplied.
Teal'la wasn't listening, consternation brewing inside her. How could she be alive for eighteen years and not know that there was an alien inside of her? And for that matter, how could Daniel not have realized it?
A thought struck her that actually caused a flare of emotional pain in her chest.
Had Daniel known all along and was keeping it from her?
Her eyes stung as she focused on the next part of the conversation.
"Is it likely that this symbiote will become active anytime in the near future?" asked George. Janet hesitated.
"Well, uh, sir, there is evidence that supports that it has—"
"Say it with me, Doc. 'I don't know'." Jack interrupted, and she shot him a scathing glare.
"I don't know sir."
Teal'la felt as if someone had just handed her own heart to her on a silver platter. It was the pain of betrayal. If Daniel knew, why wouldn't he have told her? Here she held the all time living record for Goa'uld kills and she was one?
Hot, angry tears stung her eyes and she blinked, trying not to make a sound.
"So...she's a threat?"
Teal'la wanted to shout at them, No! No, she wasn't, and she wanted desperately to believe it also, but now she just wasn't sure.
"I don't think so, sir," started Carter. "She acts like a regular kid. Even if the Goa'uld were smart enough to sleep through the gate alarms, I don't think it would be able to fool us for very long. If Teal'la were being controlled by the Goa'uld, she would have let something slip by now."
"Indeed, she shows no signs of carrying a Goa'uld." said Teal'c in her defense. He said it like it was a dirty word. Did that mean he wasn't going to like her any more, now that he knew she was carrying one? Was she even sure that she liked herself now?
"So, if she doesn't know that she has one, attached somewhere in the region of shoulders..." said Jack, somewhat flustered. She could hear the pity overflowing in his voice in his next words. "How do we break it to her? I mean, from what we know of her, she and the Goa'uld aren't exactly on a first name basis."
Teal'la carefully pulled herself up into a hunched over sitting position and listened.
"We don't." came the General's hesitant reply. Jack looked at him and then around the table at the sympathetic faces around him.
"I don't understand. What do you mean?" Jack asked. Having been half- Goa'ulded himself once, he felt the girl's pain. Daniel leaned forward.
"Jack," he said, softly. "If she doesn't already know, don't you think she'd be happier not knowing?" he asked, looking extremely sorry for the situation. Teal'la decided right then and there that she hated that look much more than the fact that there was a Goa'uld nestled in the pit of her stomach.
Time to put a stop to their pity.
She kicked the vent out from the ceiling and dropped through as Jack made to reply. He pushed himself back from the table and looked at her as she stood on the table, vent covering forgotten on the table beside her. Jack took a moment to register two things.
She was crying.
And she was *pissed*.
Her hands were clenched into fists of rage and he made no move to restrain her.
"I don't know, Daniel, why don't you ask her?" he murmured. She took a deep shuddering breath and walked towards the end of the table, stepping down calmly and walking towards the door as tears poured down the side of her face.
"Teal'la—"Daniel said, getting to his feet and grabbing her arm as she reached for the door handle. Her outstretched hand became a fist again and she rammed it into his cheek without a second thought, knocking him across the table.
"Fici bara hyo ro ich'el neo lyo," she snarled, and Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "lyo canote lomachi!"
She yanked open the door and walked through, slamming it behind her so hard that the window overlooking the 'gate room shuddered. The sounds of a struggle ensued, and there were two male screams. Jack and Teal'c looked at each other before getting to their feet as Carter went to help Daniel.
Teal'la was out of sight by the time that Jack and Teal'c were in the hallway, and they both tripped over their injured comrades, for the second time in forty-eight hours. Jack got to his feet first and helped Teal'c help the others to a more upright position. Then they looked down each corridor.
"Okay, Teal'c, let's split up. I'll take this corridor. And Teal'c," he added, as the big Jaffa started moving. He looked back at his leader. "She's upset. She not possessed."
"I understand, O'Neill."
****
It was Jack who found her. She was in her room, sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms perched atop them so that the only thing that showed were her eyes under the brim of her hat.
He opened the door and looked at her for a moment as he decided how best to handle this.
"Hey," he said, by way of greeting. She did not look at him, and her only movement was the heaving of her shoulders as random, racking sobs escaped her. Tears still streamlined her cheeks, and he waited in case she had planned to respond. When she didn't, he took a step into the room. "Mind if I join you?"
"Yes. Go away and leave me alone." she snapped, and he reeled back from the fierce pain in her cracked and emotionally hoarse voice. He looked around the room and then stepped all the way in, closing the door behind him and walking over to the cot, under which a stool was stored. He brought it over and set it down to sit on, only to watch her lash out with one booted foot and kick it all the way across the room.
It was then that he noticed the dents in the wall were she had obviously been taking out her frustrations. He looked back at her bruising knuckles and then at the stool, before taking up a space on the floor. He looked at her, not saying anything for a while.
"Daniel's fine by the way, Janet's determined that there was no lasting damage."
"Pity." she said, still not looking at him. He looked at her, curiously.
"What did you say to him in there?" he asked, carefully. Her eyes made contact with his and he leaned back a little.
"Don't touch me or I'll kill you, you lying bastard." she said, and Jack's eyebrows arched, only slightly appalled that she would say something like that at all. But then again, Janet had said she was made up of their DNA, right? He'd felt like saying something to that effect loads of times. She returned to looking past him, tears sliding down her cheeks.
He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out to her, only to have her ignore it.
"Go. Away." she said, slowly. He shook his head.
"I really don't think that would be a good idea." he said, and her eyes flicked back to him, narrowing in anger, pain, and every other relevantly bad emotion.
"I am not in the mood for any of your moral bullshit!" she yelled at him, arms moving away from her knees to reveal a very angry, very wet faced teenager. "I want to be left alone, so go away!"
She stood up, and he did the same, trying to be firm, but not get her homicidally angry in the process. He put a hand on her shoulder only to have her turn and take a swing at him. He had, fortunately for him, learned from Daniel's example and leaned back to avoid the fist as Teal'c came through the door.
She ignored him, taking another swing at Jack, who threw his own punch and knocked her for a loop. She hit the ground and rolled away, coming to a complete stop at Teal'c's feet and curling up into a ball. She stayed there, her shoulders twitching occasionally as she softly began crying again.
Jack looked at her and let out a breath, nodding at Teal'c when the larger man raised an eyebrow at him. It was strange how the team had come to interpret Teal'c's many degrees of arched eyebrows. For instance, this one meant 'Shall we transport young Teal'la to the infirmary?'
Which, after he thought about it, probably wasn't such a good idea. Seeing as how that's where Danny boy was sleeping off the punch.
Well, they'd just burn that bridge when they came to it.
A/N: Okay, that was a little depressing, but I couldn't make that chapter cheerful if I tried, so I decided to go for the all out angsty depression. Sorry if I made anyone cry, was in a 'mood' (Used all my endorphins reading the story mentioned in the Disclaimer. Really funny shit, man.)
Prodigal Son...er...Daughter
Chapter Five
I really don't get why they don't like me. I'm a likeable person. Everyone in my dimension loves me...well, except the Goa'uld...who pretty much comprise the entire planet...okay, bad example.
This is what Teal'la thought to herself as she crawled commando style through the ceiling space towards the debriefing room, where she knew they were talking about her. What was so bad about her being in on it, anyway?
I mean, the only thing there was to tell was that she was a living experiment made up of samples of their genetic material...not that big a deal...right?
She settled herself quietly next to the vent, and placed her elbows on either side of it, listening carefully as they continued the conversation that had just begun.
"—Found several places in her genetic coding that were surprisingly consistent with that of...well, the SG1 team." said Janet, a projection thrown onto the screen behind her.
There was a short silence.
"What, you mean like, similar to?" asked Daniel, swiveling his chair from side to side, like he did at almost every briefing. Above them, Teal'la smirked.
~Come on, Daniel, you know better, you were the one who came up with the idea.~ Teal'la thought as she listened.
"No, I mean exactly the same."
A longer silence.
"I fail to understand how this is possible." Teal'c said.
"Yeah, me too." Jack agreed almost instantly. Teal'la smiled, shaking her head. Poor Jack.
"Lots of Genetic manipulation, but that's not even the most interesting part." Janet continued, and in her not-quite-cozy hiding place, Teal'la blinked. What else was there to know? Janet used a laser pen to point to places on her projection. "These blocks here...here, and here...those are all Goa'uld."
There was a long moment of silence, in which Teal'la wondered if they knew she was there and were playing a practical joke on her. This notion quickly passed however and she blinked, several times. She felt a rush of panic. Her? A Goa'uld? No fucking way.
"She's a Goa'uld-Human Hybrid?" Carter asked, disbelief sounding in her voice.
"It's not just that, Major. She carries a Goa'uld symbiote."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone, doc. We have Goa'uld detectors. The alarms would have gone off if she was carrying one. You must have picked up someone else's file or something." Jack cut in, sure that he had caught a flaw in Janet's sadistic little practical joke. She looked at him.
"No, I definitely have the right file, but I do have a theory about the Goa'uld detectors. We programmed them to sense active Goa'ulds, or Goa'ulds that were influencing their hosts. The reason that we didn't detect hers is because it's dormant." Janet lectured, and Jack stared, sure that she must be joking. Goa'ulds, sleeping or no, did not let their hosts have as much fun as Teal'la had been having. He certainly didn't know any that like pumpkin cheesecake.
...
Not that he was on a first name basis with any.
"The symbiote is actually attached to her, though, I've never seen anything like this. It's like she was born this way—"
"Uh," interrupted Daniel, and everyone looked at him. "For the record, she wasn't born, she was created."
There was a moment of silence, in which everyone except Teal'c stared incredulously at him. Teal'la waited for their reactions while at the same time contemplating the new information she had just assimilated.
"How do you know that, Dr. Jackson?" asked General Hammond. Teal'c answered for him.
"Teal'la informed us of this herself, in the mess hall." he supplied.
Teal'la wasn't listening, consternation brewing inside her. How could she be alive for eighteen years and not know that there was an alien inside of her? And for that matter, how could Daniel not have realized it?
A thought struck her that actually caused a flare of emotional pain in her chest.
Had Daniel known all along and was keeping it from her?
Her eyes stung as she focused on the next part of the conversation.
"Is it likely that this symbiote will become active anytime in the near future?" asked George. Janet hesitated.
"Well, uh, sir, there is evidence that supports that it has—"
"Say it with me, Doc. 'I don't know'." Jack interrupted, and she shot him a scathing glare.
"I don't know sir."
Teal'la felt as if someone had just handed her own heart to her on a silver platter. It was the pain of betrayal. If Daniel knew, why wouldn't he have told her? Here she held the all time living record for Goa'uld kills and she was one?
Hot, angry tears stung her eyes and she blinked, trying not to make a sound.
"So...she's a threat?"
Teal'la wanted to shout at them, No! No, she wasn't, and she wanted desperately to believe it also, but now she just wasn't sure.
"I don't think so, sir," started Carter. "She acts like a regular kid. Even if the Goa'uld were smart enough to sleep through the gate alarms, I don't think it would be able to fool us for very long. If Teal'la were being controlled by the Goa'uld, she would have let something slip by now."
"Indeed, she shows no signs of carrying a Goa'uld." said Teal'c in her defense. He said it like it was a dirty word. Did that mean he wasn't going to like her any more, now that he knew she was carrying one? Was she even sure that she liked herself now?
"So, if she doesn't know that she has one, attached somewhere in the region of shoulders..." said Jack, somewhat flustered. She could hear the pity overflowing in his voice in his next words. "How do we break it to her? I mean, from what we know of her, she and the Goa'uld aren't exactly on a first name basis."
Teal'la carefully pulled herself up into a hunched over sitting position and listened.
"We don't." came the General's hesitant reply. Jack looked at him and then around the table at the sympathetic faces around him.
"I don't understand. What do you mean?" Jack asked. Having been half- Goa'ulded himself once, he felt the girl's pain. Daniel leaned forward.
"Jack," he said, softly. "If she doesn't already know, don't you think she'd be happier not knowing?" he asked, looking extremely sorry for the situation. Teal'la decided right then and there that she hated that look much more than the fact that there was a Goa'uld nestled in the pit of her stomach.
Time to put a stop to their pity.
She kicked the vent out from the ceiling and dropped through as Jack made to reply. He pushed himself back from the table and looked at her as she stood on the table, vent covering forgotten on the table beside her. Jack took a moment to register two things.
She was crying.
And she was *pissed*.
Her hands were clenched into fists of rage and he made no move to restrain her.
"I don't know, Daniel, why don't you ask her?" he murmured. She took a deep shuddering breath and walked towards the end of the table, stepping down calmly and walking towards the door as tears poured down the side of her face.
"Teal'la—"Daniel said, getting to his feet and grabbing her arm as she reached for the door handle. Her outstretched hand became a fist again and she rammed it into his cheek without a second thought, knocking him across the table.
"Fici bara hyo ro ich'el neo lyo," she snarled, and Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "lyo canote lomachi!"
She yanked open the door and walked through, slamming it behind her so hard that the window overlooking the 'gate room shuddered. The sounds of a struggle ensued, and there were two male screams. Jack and Teal'c looked at each other before getting to their feet as Carter went to help Daniel.
Teal'la was out of sight by the time that Jack and Teal'c were in the hallway, and they both tripped over their injured comrades, for the second time in forty-eight hours. Jack got to his feet first and helped Teal'c help the others to a more upright position. Then they looked down each corridor.
"Okay, Teal'c, let's split up. I'll take this corridor. And Teal'c," he added, as the big Jaffa started moving. He looked back at his leader. "She's upset. She not possessed."
"I understand, O'Neill."
****
It was Jack who found her. She was in her room, sitting in the corner with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms perched atop them so that the only thing that showed were her eyes under the brim of her hat.
He opened the door and looked at her for a moment as he decided how best to handle this.
"Hey," he said, by way of greeting. She did not look at him, and her only movement was the heaving of her shoulders as random, racking sobs escaped her. Tears still streamlined her cheeks, and he waited in case she had planned to respond. When she didn't, he took a step into the room. "Mind if I join you?"
"Yes. Go away and leave me alone." she snapped, and he reeled back from the fierce pain in her cracked and emotionally hoarse voice. He looked around the room and then stepped all the way in, closing the door behind him and walking over to the cot, under which a stool was stored. He brought it over and set it down to sit on, only to watch her lash out with one booted foot and kick it all the way across the room.
It was then that he noticed the dents in the wall were she had obviously been taking out her frustrations. He looked back at her bruising knuckles and then at the stool, before taking up a space on the floor. He looked at her, not saying anything for a while.
"Daniel's fine by the way, Janet's determined that there was no lasting damage."
"Pity." she said, still not looking at him. He looked at her, curiously.
"What did you say to him in there?" he asked, carefully. Her eyes made contact with his and he leaned back a little.
"Don't touch me or I'll kill you, you lying bastard." she said, and Jack's eyebrows arched, only slightly appalled that she would say something like that at all. But then again, Janet had said she was made up of their DNA, right? He'd felt like saying something to that effect loads of times. She returned to looking past him, tears sliding down her cheeks.
He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and held it out to her, only to have her ignore it.
"Go. Away." she said, slowly. He shook his head.
"I really don't think that would be a good idea." he said, and her eyes flicked back to him, narrowing in anger, pain, and every other relevantly bad emotion.
"I am not in the mood for any of your moral bullshit!" she yelled at him, arms moving away from her knees to reveal a very angry, very wet faced teenager. "I want to be left alone, so go away!"
She stood up, and he did the same, trying to be firm, but not get her homicidally angry in the process. He put a hand on her shoulder only to have her turn and take a swing at him. He had, fortunately for him, learned from Daniel's example and leaned back to avoid the fist as Teal'c came through the door.
She ignored him, taking another swing at Jack, who threw his own punch and knocked her for a loop. She hit the ground and rolled away, coming to a complete stop at Teal'c's feet and curling up into a ball. She stayed there, her shoulders twitching occasionally as she softly began crying again.
Jack looked at her and let out a breath, nodding at Teal'c when the larger man raised an eyebrow at him. It was strange how the team had come to interpret Teal'c's many degrees of arched eyebrows. For instance, this one meant 'Shall we transport young Teal'la to the infirmary?'
Which, after he thought about it, probably wasn't such a good idea. Seeing as how that's where Danny boy was sleeping off the punch.
Well, they'd just burn that bridge when they came to it.
A/N: Okay, that was a little depressing, but I couldn't make that chapter cheerful if I tried, so I decided to go for the all out angsty depression. Sorry if I made anyone cry, was in a 'mood' (Used all my endorphins reading the story mentioned in the Disclaimer. Really funny shit, man.)