For Info & Disclaimer, see Chapter 1.
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"You and Jack were engaged to be married."
The moment those words left Daniel's mouth, all of Jack's thought processes stopped.
For what seemed like an eternity to Jack, but was in reality little more than the passing of seconds, everything halted. He could still hear of the others conversing, but that one word took precedence.
Freezing time and turning his world upside down, as it resounded over and over in his head like a stuck record.
Engaged?
"Excuse me?"
As soon as he'd retorted, his mind raced back to replay the entire sentence, making sure he'd heard correctly. He was oblivious to the other three people trying to understand the concept of this 'reality' thing. That was the most important thing to them. It wasn't to him.
How could they treat the idea of him being engaged to his Second as a throwaway line?
Was he the only one who had a problem with this?!
Desperate to get a clear answer from the Daniel 'The Runaway' Jackson, he interrupted them again, bringing their conversation back to the point he still couldn't get past.
"Alright, wait a minute, let me get something straight. Engaged?"
He motioned with his hands to clarify.
"It is theoretically possible." Carter stated effortlessly and with a straight face as well.
'What the--?! Hold on, maybe whatever hallucination bug Daniel has is contagious?'
God, he hoped so.
Determined to be the voice of reason in this insane conversation, he blurted out forcibly, "It's against regulations!"
Then restrained the desire to roll his eyes at himself.
'Geez Jack! Is that the best reason you can come up with?!'
Hoping beyond all doubt that she would agree with him, he curiously noted the slight flush of her cheeks as she offered her explanation.
"I'm talking physics, sir. The whole concept of alternate realities, alternate universes, was predicted by Einstein, a long time ago..."
Breathing an internal sigh of relief, he almost chimed in with a sarcastic remark, but stopped just in time to see General Hammond enter the room with the annoying Samuels tagging along for good measure.
Jack did honestly try not to grimace at Samuels but knew he'd failed.
Oh well, what did he care? He had bigger problems to deal with…like figuring out where Daniel had really been all that time and why being "engaged" to Carter was bothering him so much.
He couldn't quite pinpoint the twinge that seemed to appear whenever he thought about her and it was bugging him. Big time. It felt almost familiar…like he should recognise it.
He just couldn't seem to put his finger on it.
He realised Hammond was asking him a question and forced himself to pay attention, bringing his thoughts back to the present with a shake of the head. This was probably not the best time to be thinking about her.
In fact, it was probably not a good idea to think about her at all…at least not like that.
That could be trouble.
End