A/N: Ah, the plot thickens. Hope everyone enjoys this next chp... a lot. Because I'm not sure when the next one will be done. I kind of got in trouble for sort of slacking off, so I might not have as much free time as I previously thought. -pouts-
o o o
There was a knock on Sam's door and before she could call out to whoever it was to come in, the door burst open. Jack strode in, his hand clasping O'ahka's. His expression was stormy as he declared, "Watch her." Then he walked right back out, slamming the door behind him.
O'ahka stood in the middle of Sam's lab, staring at the floor, guiltily. "Okay..." Sam wondered, "What happened?"
The little imp mumbled something, while trailing the toe of her right foot along the floor in front of her. "What?" Sam questioned, and O'ahka mumbled a bit more clearly, "I made the General and Dr. Jackson angry with each other."
Sam rubbed her temple. "How," she asked, feeling as if this were a monumental start to a bad day.
O'ahka still refused to look up at her as she explained, vaguely, "I made them choose sides over me."
"And they were getting along so well lately," Sam muttered, feeling depressed and annoyed all at once. "Tell me exactly what happened, and maybe I can help you fix it."
O'ahka looked up at the astrophysicist in surprise. "You'll help me?"
"Of course," Sam agreed. "Just as soon as you explain what happened," she urged irritably.
O'ahka swallowed nervously. "Basically... I told Daniel that Jack said that he was glad that Daniel isn't naive anymore. So they were arguing about aliens and... there was a whole bunch of memories and subtext that I couldn't quite follow, but the gist of it is, I dug up some old issues, and Daniel walked off telling me to tell Jack what he was thinking, which was that he hates Jack." She sighed then began chewing at her bottom lip.
Sam wondered if she'd picked that particular gesture up from Daniel. "So..." she began, repeating the information back to O'ahka, "You made them argue and now Daniel is angry with Jack, and Jack is angry with Daniel for being angry with him?"
O'ahka nodded solemnly in reply. Sam buried her face in her hands for a few seconds then took a deep breath and looked up at O'ahka again. "Did it even occur to you that meddling with something that wasn't in need of fixing was a bad idea?"
O'ahka wrapped her arms around her chest and glared at Sam. "I was trying to help them," she defended herself.
"Well, you shouldn't have," Sam told her, bluntly. A bit harsh, Sam? she asked herself.
O'ahka pursed her lips together and frowned stubbornly. "General O'Neill likes you but he keeps it a secret."
"What?" Sam's face went cold as the blood drained from it and then flared up with heat as it came rushing back. "O'ahka," she warned, "That's none of your business."
"And you like him too!" O'ahka declared. "But you both are too scared to admit it to each other because you're afraid the feeling won't be reciprocated or someone will find out and take the other away from you. But how long are you going to wait for it to be right? Until one of you has died?"
Sam stood up from her seat, not quite sure what she was going to do, only that she was amazingly furious at the moment. O'ahka backed up toward the door the look on her face close to tears or... she was scared. All the air went out of Sam's bubble, and she collapsed back into her seat.
"You're right," she said, quietly, gazing down at her desk. "But we have to wait. We can't do anything right now... It wouldn't be right for several reasons."
First, it was against the rules, second, if one of them died, which was quite possible, it would only be worse for the other one left. Third, what if they realized they were all wrong in that sort of relationship? It would make their professional relationship together a major issue.
O'ahka shook her head and hugged herself again. The flicker of a memory entered Sam's mind, but it passed before she could place it. "I don't get you people," the little girl said, sounding defeated. "You want so much, but you never even try to take it."
o o o
Daniel glanced over the notes he'd made of O'ahka's gravestone and narrowed his eyes as if that would help him decipher the meaning of the etchings. Who was the girl really? And why was she so determined to interfere with his life?
Look how badly she'd messed it up already. He thought that those problems he'd had with Jack had pretty much been resolved already. Maybe they hadn't, though. Maybe they'd just been put on hold for a little while.
But it wasn't like he didn't have his part in making it worse. He had practically told O'ahka to tell Jack that he hated him. Even though it wasn't exactly the truth. He'd certainly meant it, but just in the way that young children mean it. In the heat of anger, and then when the anger was gone, so was the "hate."
Daniel removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. Crap... Maybe he was just stressed out. Otherwise why would he have acted so childishly? Sighing, Daniel replaced his glasses and stared at his notes again. He looked at the rough sketch he'd made of the etchings. O'ahka said that that particular word stood for her name, Daniel remembered. As he stared at the enscription, it seemed to waver and shift. O'ahka...child of the stars. Resting here but never ours.
Daniel blinked, and the momentary hallucination cleared. Had he really read what he'd thought he'd read, or was his tired brain just playing tricks on him? Was it possible that maybe O'ahka's ability to pick certain things up from the mind of others worked both ways? Too bad he hadn't copied more of the inscription to test that theory on.
o o o
"First," Samantha told O'ahka, "We're going to go talk to General O'Neill, and then we'll go talk to Dr. Jackson." She glanced back to where O'ahka was trailing behind her to see if the girl was even listening and noticed that O'ahka was watching her feet carefully as she walked.
"O'ahka," Sam halted and questioned, "Are you all right?" O'ahka looked up just in time to bump into Sam's legs. She caught herself on Sam's pants then looked up at the Colonel sheepishly. She was squinting. "Can you see me okay?" Sam wondered suspiciously.
"Yes," O'ahka replied, smiling, but she sounded uncertain. Sam held up two fingers.
"Count my fingers," she requested, and O'ahka frowned and squinted even harder in the direction of Sam's hand. She nibbled on her bottom lip and finally said, "Two... but..." She cleared her throat. "I had to cheat, Samantha." She blushed and looked away.
Sam blinked and put down her hand. She had forgotten that the girl could read minds. "You're having trouble seeing two feet in front of you, aren't you?" she questioned.
O'ahka glared at her feet and mumbled something. "What?" Sam questioned, and she repeated, "I said, 'I can't even see my hand right here'." She held up her hand a few inches away from her face.
Sam was amazed. That was almost exactly the way Daniel described his own sight problem, myopia. "Let's stop by the infirmiry before we go find General O'Neill," she suggested, her curiosity peeked to its maximum.
She started to walk away, and looked back to see the little girl looking lost and holding her arms around her chest. "What is it?" she questioned.
O'ahka squinted in her general direction and replied, "Will you hold my hand?"
Oh. "I'm sorry," she apologized, feeling like a jerk. She returned, grasping the girl's hand in her own. "I won't let you fall," she said quietly, "I promise."
o o o
Dr. Brightman said, "She definitely needs glasses, and I happen to have an extra pair of Dr. Jackson's..." She looked at Samantha, questioningly, having it seemed, caught on to the theory just by Sam's hints.
"Go ahead and bring them," Sam requested, and the Doctor left the examination room, returning a moment later with a pair of spectacles in her hand.
She handed them over to O'ahka, who was seated on the edge of the examination table. O'ahka slid them onto her face and they slipped down the bridge of her nose a bit. When she pushed them back up, Sam was overwhelmed by sense of deja vu.
"Can you see any better?" Brightman wondered, curiously.
O'ahka nodded, smiling with relief. "Yes." She looked slightly ridiculous but overall pretty cute in the oversized lenses. Sam held back her grin, though, afraid she might embarrass O'ahka.
"Then you can keep those until we have a smaller pair ordered," Brightman replied, smiling politely in return.
"Come on," Sam said to O'ahka, "Let's go talk to the General." She lifted O'ahka off of the examination table and onto the floor.
O'ahka said quietly as they walked out into the hall, "You can laugh if you want." She grinned at Sam, while pushing the huge glasses back up over her eyes again. She looked like Professor Owl.
Sam giggled.
o o o