"Perfect Storms
By: overstars
Disclaimer: I do not own Stargate SG-1 or any of the characters within. I do not intend to infringe upon any copyrights. I have made no financial or tangible gains from the writing or publication of this story on this site or any other site on which it may appear.
1. Calm Before
This planet does not work on Earth time, and the fourteen hours of darkness a night are disconcerting, but Jennifer can make the conversion. She can tell that they've been there for exactly thirty two days and sixteen hours, Earth time. Math's always been her strong suit. In fact, math is her pacifier, her soothing shot of scotch after the hard days. It helps to work out theorems in her head at night, it works like some low level mental painkiller. It keeps her thinking about wormholes and the science that everyone else seems so keen to forget.
They're still going to have to work the numbers, work the problem. Only nobody else is.
They've been building a log cabin and a storage shed, for the most part she's gone along with it. Which is fine, but nobody else seems to have thought beyond that. So, they build it and just live in it until the supplies are gone and they're stuck eating leaves?
Jennifer's tried to bring it up with someone, but Jack is always keeping them busy, always has something else that he says is more pressing.
So she's sitting on the ground of a planet they still haven't come up with a name for , staring up at a newly finished roof.
Jonas and Paul have gone out hunting for food and firewood and anything else that could be potentially useful. Jack and Amy are putting on finishing details to the house and using mud to fill in any cracks.
She looks up at the roof and wipes her forehead. She takes a long drink of water from her canteen. Her frustration goes deeper than her physical sense of weariness. Her frustration feels like a tightly wound cord at the center of her being, pushing her against the walls she's starting to run into.
The walls she thought she'd gotten to leave behind. It always seems to go this way in her life. She thinks she's going to a better place, a place where she's not going to be held back by fears, bureaucracy, or just inferior people with inferior brains.
It's a smaller bureaucracy, but it's the same story. Jennifer is ready to go, but Jack's afraid, and Paul and Jonas follow his lead, and Amy is nowhere near ready.
And none of them are working the problem. That's the worst part.
It's not that Jennifer snaps, but makes the conscious decision that from this point on, it's over. Gate travel or bust. She isn't going to wait long enough to snap.
Jack comes from around the side of the house and says, "Hup, hup, Hailey, still got to roof the shed."
Jennifer looks up at him. Shirtless and sweating as profusely as she is, his pale and mostly hairless teenage-boy chest exposed. If he sucked in just a little she could count all his ribs. And his stomach is flat and there are the barest indications of ab muscles. His shirt is tucked into his belt and he bends down to wipe his forehead.
Funny, the old Jack O'Neill never looked that scrawny. But then again, he had almost fifty years of grit, gristle and scars to fill him out.
"With all due respect, sir, no"
Jack stands still with one eyebrow up. "Excuse me?"
Jennifer stands up and caps her canteen. "You want the shed done, do it yourself."
"My hearing must be going in my old age here, Captain, because I thought I just heard you say you weren't helping us with the shed," Jack answers.
"Sorry, sir, I'll use smaller words. Bite. Me."
"Do you need me to make it an order?"
Jennifer crosses her arms. "You and exactly what Air Force?"
Jack rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Oh for cryin' out loud. What's gotten into you, Hailey?"
"I didn't give up my career to go on an intergalactic camping trip. We've been here for nearly a month and so far all we've done is waste supplies and use up most of anything that might be useful for trade!"
"We're trying to make sure we have somewhere to live and store our supplies!"
"We won't have any supplies to store if we don't start getting offworld immediately."
"How is that going to help anything, especially if we can't protect whatever we get offworld from the weather?"
Hailey puts a hand to over her eyes and growls a long frustrated growl. "My problem is not the shed! My problem is that this is just another excuse."
"An excuse?"
"Yes! An excuse! You're too frightened to take her offworld and you're thinking of anything you can to delay that. She's already on an alien planet and I think we've established the Furlings are not here."
Amy hears the shouting and comes around the corner, to see what's going on. Neither of them see her standing back, watching.
So Jack doesn't know she's there when he says, "She's not ready, you know damn well she isn't. And I'm not going to."
"So get her ready!"
They see Paul and Jonas coming towards them, carrying a dead animal that might be classified by someone with severe myopia as a pig. It was probably a pig in a former life. Both Jennifer and Jack ignore them. And neither of them have yet seen Amy, standing there, watching and listening.
"She's sixteen, Hailey! She's a kid. And there is no way on god's green Earth or any other planet that I'm taking her offworld until I'm absolutely sure she's ready for it."
"And when exactly is that going to be?"
"I don't know! She needs time."
Paul coughs to get their attention. "Is there a problem?"
Jack says no, Jennifer says yes. Both at the same time.
"All right, anyone care to fill me in?" Paul asks.
"We need to start going offworld, Paul, but somehow the colonel doesn't seem to get that."
"We've only been here a couple of weeks, Hailey. You have to give it time."
"We've been here for thirty-four Earth days. When exactly do you think we'll get around to doing what we came here to do, sir? Because as I've been trying to impress upon you, time is quickly becoming a factor."
Jennifer can feel the heat coming to her face, and if she could take a look outside herself she'd see the red rising up like water up a paper napkin in splotches. She knows it and shoves it aside because it truly doesn't matter.
She doesn't want this to be the wrong decision. She doesn't want to find out that she's just bought into another false hope of getting somewhere.
And she waits for Jack's next excuse, his retort. But his expression changes. He isn't arguing. He's deciding.
She's seen that look. It's the look he gives to Colonel Carter or Dr. Jackson when he's weighing their arguments. When their words start sinking into his brain and change the layout of his thoughts.
Maybe it's a miracle, maybe he just might give her the same regard.
It's like riding a giant wave, waiting for his answer. To see if she's passed this test. Feels exactly like waiting for exam scores or lab results.
He sighs and scratches across his ribs.
"You really think that we're pressed for time?" he asks her.
He really listened. He's really opening the door for her. Jennifer blinks. She's not exactly sure what to do with a fair chance.
"Yes, I do," she stammers, still a little off balance from the sheer fairness of it.
He listened. Jack is really going to try to see her point of view. It's a little bit exhilarating, feeling like she just might have influence. Power, even. Control. A say in things.
Jack crosses his arms. Scratches across his skinny teenage ribs and says, shirtless and scrawny and sounding exactly like his otherself, "All right. Then in that case, Jonas, I want you and Hailey to start getting a list of possible destinations. Paul, you and Amy take a case of weapons and don't come back until she can shoot straight."
"Really?" Jennifer asks, still in a vein of confusion at being so suddenly agreed with. "What will you be doing?"
"Finishing the roof," Jack says, putting his hands on his hips. He blinks. "And supervising. Because that's what I do. I supervise."
They all stand, blinking at their rather skinny but apparently still fearless leader. Jack looks back at them.
"What? Am I not speaking English? I'll use smaller words. Go, people," he says to them, pointing off in some general direction. They take another second then break away from him.
Hailey goes off towards the MALP and doesn't look back. The list is already building in her head. She's been doing the math the entire time and she's ready to work the problem.
