A/N: I'm so glad readers actually seem to like this. So far I haven't gotten stuck. Perhaps that is because I am bored to tears. No school, just work, and my brain feels like it's starting to atrophe. So I need something to do. That's why the updates have been so quick, but I don't know how long that will last. M.

o o o

I would like to go back to "digging up rocks" one day...

O'ahka walked down the hall with Sam beside her, thinking about Daniel's words from the night before. Not only his words but...

I would like to not have to see people die in front of me. I would like to not have to lose my loved ones with every other breath I breathe...

Tugging on the end of Sam's shirt, she asked, "Do you think General O'Neill will be busy?"

It depends on your definition of busy, was Sam's somewhat ironic thought. Aloud she was more polite, "I don't know. We'll see when we get to his office."

O'ahka tried not to giggle when she caught Sam's mental picture of a juvenile Jack O'Neill playing a human game with controls hooked up to a viewing screen. The word Nintendo came to mind.

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," Sam said once they'd located Jack in his office, "But O'ahka wanted to talk with you."

"With me?" Jack wondered, looking up from the file on his desk.

"It's about 'rockboy'," O'ahka said, and Jack's mouth opened and worked as if he were trying to think of something to say and couldn't.

Sam went red in the face for some reason she couldn't quite fathom except that that nickname had been something Jack had referred to Daniel as when they had first started working together and were still trying to figure out how to get along.

"I'd better, uhm," she began, nervously, "Go fix something in my lab," she finished quickly and practically ran away.

Jack wondered, "Do you even know what you just said?" He'd finally gotten control of his tongue if not his volatile emotions.

O'ahka silently stepped forward and lifted herself into the seat in front of Jack's desk. "I asked Dr. Jackson what he wanted most and he said, 'I'd like to go back to "digging up rocks" someday.' He said a little more, but when he said that, I got this very clear image of you from him." Could she help it if she sounded a little accusing.

"Please tell me I'm not getting a lecture from a seven year old kid," Jack muttered. "Look, O', whatever misunderstandings between me and Daniel have since then been resolved. I don't appreciate you mucking around in his brain and dredging up all this crap from the past."

"He said it," she exclaimed, "It's not my fault he's been disallusioned!"

Did that make it Jack's fault? "Are you accusing me of disallusioning Dr. Jackson? Because if you are, then maybe it's good that he's not so naive anymore." Wow, he was actually chewing out a seven year old kid. Albeit an alien, older than she seemed, seven year old kid.

"It's not that he's more world wise now!" O'ahka yelled, leaning forward in the chair so far she had to catch hold of the desk before she fell off. "It's that he's hopeless! He's lost faith! He doesn't think you're all going to make it! How else can I say it? Life sucks, and I'm just going to have to bare it."

Did she really need to add, without the grin? Kicking herself back against the chair, she burst into hysterical sobbing.

Uh, oh, Jack thought, and got to his feet to go around and crouch beside O'ahka. "Hey, don't do that... Listen..." Frustrated he took her wrist and pulled one of her hands away from her face, "Stop."

"Meanie," she bit back at him. "Don't you care how he feels?"

"I do, but you have to understand," Jack tried to explain, "People deal with things in different ways. I... I just don't want to interfere with his way of dealing."

"That's bull," she retorted, snatching her wrist away from his loosened grip. "If you really saw him as a son, you would be trying to interfere as much as possible."

Now that was unfair, and none of her business, come to think of it. "Don't start picking my brain now, O'," he warned her.

She dropped her hands from her face and glared at him. "When he does all that stupid stuff... Well, when he used to. Wasn't it even the slightest clue that something was going on inside his head?"

Darn. She certainly had him there. Hadn't he wondered himself, after the incident with the sarcophagus and Daniel's subsequent addiction, if maybe he'd done it because there was something in him that said, "Hey, the world sucks, let me try and fix it this way." But it had all turned out okay, and he'd let himself forgive and forget... Maybe she was right, maybe he shouldn't have.

But that didn't really give her the right to tell him that. "Just leave it alone, all right?" he told her, flatly.

O'ahka growled in frustration then hopped off the chair. "You're stupid. If I had someone who loved me as much as the people that love you, I wouldn't waste it by refusing to reciprocate. Stupid... stupid... Stupid!" She punctuated her last word by stomping out of his office angrily.

Jack tried not to think about the relevant parts of her argument. But darn she had a good point.

And then he remembered that he couldn't just let the girl go running around the SGC unattended. "Oh, for crying out loud," he vented, and hurried after her as quickly as his crotchety old knee would allow.

"O'!" he called, finally catching sight of her on the stairway. She glanced back and up at him and stuck out her tongue.

"I don't want to talk to you anymore," she yelled, continuing to hop down the stairs at a speed he decided was not safe.

"Just slow down, O', or you're going to fall," Jack growled back down to her.

"You'd fall, you old man," she returned cheekily.

"I am so going to get her," Jack muttered under his breath. An SF caught up with him and asked, "Need any help sir?"

Jack's eyes narrowed, and he replied breathlessly, "Nah, I got this one, Lieutenant." Yeah, he had this one all right. He had her in his sights about seven feet away, already at the bottom of the stairs. Darn it...

"O'ahka!" Daniel, who was walking by with a file tucked under one arm and a coffee mug in the other, stopped in front of the girl and inadvertantly blocked her way. "What are you doing over here by yourself?"

"She's not by herself," Jack explained, finally reaching them. He leaned on the rail of the stair and tried to catch his breath. He wasn't exactly out of shape, but then, he was definitely not in shape compared to a seven year old kid, either.

O'ahka cried, "Daniel!" and threw her arms around Daniel's legs. She turned her head to glare back at Jack. "General O'Neill was being mean to me!" she accused.

Daniel blinked at Jack, nibbling on his bottom lip a bit. "Did you say som--?"

"No! I mean--" Jack protested, but O'ahka cut in.

"He said that now that you hate life, he's happy!"

"What?" Jack and Daniel exclaimed at the same time--Jack in outrage and Daniel in shock.

"Daniel," Jack said, placatingly, "I obviously did not say that."

Daniel chewed on the inside of the corner of his mouth. "And O'ahka can't read minds and hasn't really been crying?" Oh. Uh, oh. He was being sarcastic. Was he really going to take O'ahka's, a strange alien's, side over his? Why not? He'd done it before. Reese came to mind.

"She's lying," Jack retorted, defensively.

Daniel placed his semi free hand on O'ahka's shoulder and glared at Jack. "She's a little girl."

"Oh, for crying out loud, Daniel!" was all Jack could think to come up with. He improvised, "She's an alien. One that we know nothing about except that, so far, she's a perfectly normal human kid. That in itself tells me that something isn't right."

"So I guess everything different and alien automatically has to be bad," Daniel wondered, scathingly, and a few heads turned at that but quickly turned back to whatever they'd been doing before. Jack was sure that they were only pretending to do it, this time, though.

"I didn't say that," Jack said, straining for a calm tone. "O', why don't you explain to Daniel what I really said?"

O'ahka moved her face away from Daniel's legs to peek at Jack. "You said, 'maybe it's a good thing that he's not so naive anymore'," O'ahka told him, and he kicked himself mentally. He'd known it was a bad idea to try to enlist her help, but he'd been desperate.

Daniel's face took on a blank look that signified imminent disaster. "O'ahka, tell Jack what I'm thinking right now," he said quietly then turned and strode purposely away from the observation room area.

O'ahka sniffled and rubbed her eyes. Jack swallowed, "What did...?"

She looked up at him with tear-filled blue eyes. Her lip quivered. "He said he hates you."

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