A/N: So I thought about what I wanted to do next, and I thought up something wicked. Incidentally, you won't find out what it is until the next chapter. Heheh. So I hope you enjoy this one enough to tide you over. Misao-incarnate.
o o o
When Daniel, Teal'c, Carter, O'ahka and Jack all converged in the gateroom the next morning to go through the stargate back to O'ahka's gravesite, of the five of them, only two weren't averting their eyes from each other. Those two were O'ahka and Teal'c, but it wasn't like the pair had much to say to one another, anyway, so a tense, stifled atmosphere prevailed.
Jack was relieved when they stepped through the wormhole. At least they didn't have to pretend they weren't talking to each other then. Daniel wondered when they were on the other side, "Sam, didn't you say something about a test that Dr. Brightman was running for you?"
"Oh, she still needs another twelve hours," Carter replied, "So it'll probably be done by tonight."
"Do you believe this test will reveal some pertinent information?" Teal'c asked, while scanning the countryside.
O'ahka grumbled, "It won't."
Carter ignored her and replied, "Yes, pretty certain."
"I think you're hiding something, demon-child," Jack directed at O'ahka.
"Leave me alone, you big, ugly giant," O'ahka shot back at him.
"Stop it, you two," Daniel scolded, starting forward in the direction of the ruins.
"She started it," Jack said under his breath. Carter gave him a look, and he shrugged. She shook her head and turned away, and he got the feeling she'd just given him a silent, 'Grow up.'
Man. Why was everyone so strung up this morning, anyway? At least Teal'c was still steady as a rock... "T," he said, catching up to the taller man, "Heard any good jokes lately?"
Before long, they'd reached the ruins, and Daniel went straight to crouching in front of one of the large stones. "O'ahka, child of the stars," he read aloud, glancing at O'ahka with a funny expression. "Resting here, but never ours."
O'ahka seated herself on the grass and began to fidget by plucking everything green out of the brown. "She could not die, but is asleep. Who can wake her from her dream?" Daniel finished translating, and looked up at Sam.
"What do you think that means?" He looked at the girl. "I get the part about you not being able to die, but that last line is rather ambiguous."
O'ahka threw a handful of grass at him and answered a bit petulantly, "Figure it out."
"She's such a brat," Jack said in exasperation.
Sam murmured, "Well... dream... Dreaming is like reality, but it's really not reality. So if you could never wake from it, it would seem like something real." Her eyes went round. "But you would still feel as if it weren't real."
Daniel chewed on his bottom lip, thoughtfully and stared at the gravestone. "Never being able to die would be like never being able to wake up from a dream."
O'ahka shot to her feet and yelled, "Why couldn't you just leave it alone? You had to come back here and ruin everything!" She started running away, and Jack caught her by the back of her tunic. She twisted, but unable to free herself, turned enough so that she could kick him in the leg. "Let me go!"
Daniel stood to his feet and questioned, "Were you posing as their goddess, O'ahka?"
"They mistook me for a goddess," O'ahka responded, still trying to extract herself from Jack's grip. "So I stayed here and tried to teach them as much as I could without screwing up their civilization." She tried kicking Jack again, but he dodged.
"What happened to you?" Carter asked, "Why did you... fall asleep?"
"Perhaps her form was not suited for her surroundings," Teal'c suggested. O'ahka glared at him.
"He's right--I was nothing but a sliver of ethereal rainbows. No wonder they thought I was a god. I could only speak with them by telepathy... And only certain people were receptive enough to understand me. I was growing weak because that form was only suited for my home planet, but it was destroyed." She stopped fighting Jack, and he carefully released her. She stood there, hugging herself. "I had nowhere else to go. I actually welcomed the thought of dying, but... all I did was scatter away into the earth and fall asleep."
"But I woke you up," Daniel finished her tale for her.
She nodded and bit her lip. "We should head back now," Carter suggested.
Jack agreed, "That doesn't explain why you have a physical body now."
O'ahka was silent, and Carter put in, "I think I have an explanation for that, sir. If you can wait a little while to hear it?" she posed it as a question.
Sighing, Jack nodded. "Why not?"
o o o
O'ahka stretched and yawned. She blinked open her eyes and realized she wasn't wearing the glasses. "Daniel?" she questioned, panicking and sitting up quickly.
"Here," he said, a big blob coming to stand beside her. He slipped the lenses over her eyes, and he came into focus.
"Thank you," she mumbled. He ruffled her hair.
"No problem. Did you have a good nap?" he asked, smiling at her.
"Mm-hmm," she replied. She yawned again and watched Daniel return to his puttering. He seemed sad, but she couldn't fix on to any of his thoughts like usual. She tried a wider range, searching for Teal'c, Sam, and Jack, but couldn't sense any of their thoughts either.
"You hungry?" Daniel turned from his puttering to ask her. O'ahka rubbed her tummy and then poked its center, staring at it fixedly.
"I don'no... Does it gurgle and feel watery when you're hungry?"
When she looked up again, Daniel was giving her an incredulous look. "I thought you would know by now. Weren't you hungry all day yesterday?"
"Nope," she replied, smiling cheerfully, "The medicine stopped me from being hungry. And the day before that, I still wasn't used to this body enough to notice."
"I'm not even going to ask if you've been to the bathroom yet," Daniel muttered, and O'ahka blushed.
"This morning--" she began, and he held up a hand to cut her off. She giggled because he was even more embarrassed than she was, it seemed. "Daniel, these clothes," she pointed at her light-blue, unrefined silk tunic and skirt, "Are getting dirty... Is there anything else I can wear?"
Daniel blinked at her and then said, "I suppose I could go shopping..."
"I need underthings too," O'ahka told him, flatly. He blushed.
"Or I could get Sam to go," he changed his mind.
O'ahka perked up. "Can I go with her?"
Daniel sighed. "You can't leave the base, remember?" O'ahka, crestfallen, stared at her lap. "I'll ask Jack if maybe he can get you cleared to go offbase." She perked up, and he held up a finger. "But it won't be soon enough for you to go with Sam even if he agrees."
O'ahka grinned and started singing, Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai... Daniel gave her an odd look and said, "Let's go get you some lunch."
o o o
When Carter told him where she was going, Jack decided to come along. They were at the store now, picking out play clothes for a little girl who wasn't even theirs. They could have just found some used clothes somewhere. There were plenty of people at the SGC who thought O'ahka was as cute as a button and would've been willing to lend her some hand-me-downs.
But here they were, buying her brand new clothes... Maybe he felt guilty about Daniel and was overcompensating, Jack reasoned. It was hard to tell. It was hard to tell where his feelings about his son, Charlie, ended and where ones about Daniel began.
"This looks cute," Jack pointed out, but Sam gave him one of those, "you have no clue what you're talking about" looks.
She held up another blouse that was similar to the one he'd shown her and asked, "How about this one?" It was his turn to give her a look.
"That's awfully flirty for a seven year old," he supplied.
She looked at it again and shrugged. "It's not like she has a boyfriend already."
"You sure about that?" Daniel had said that she claimed to have been about twenty when she fell asleep.
Sam only grinned but put the blouse back on the hanger rack. They moved on. Jack started to take another blouse off of a rack to show Carter when she turned and asked him, "Are you and Daniel still angry with each other?"
"I think he wants to stay angry with me," Jack said, quietly, worried other shoppers might eavesdrop.
"Why?" Sam questioned, taking the blouse from him and pretending to look at it.
"I think he's afraid I'm going to die on him," Jack replied with dripping irony.
"Oh," Carter said. She handed the blouse back to him. "This one is nice. Let's go find some jeans." They'd already found about three other blouses. Jack tossed the latest one in their cart and followed Sam to the pants.
"I need to figure out a way to convince him that I'll be here to the end of time," Jack continued dryly.
Sam picked up a pair of jeans and examined them. "It's not possible. I doubt Daniel would stop worrying even if you quit the stargate program."
"Do you worry?" Jack questioned, the thought only then occuring to him. She smiled at him wanly, and he had his answer.
"By the way, what was that test you were running on O's blood?" Carter gave him a mischievous glance and replied, "Tonight, sir. And not a moment sooner."
Darn, but the woman could keep a secret.
o o o
Jack and Sam stopped by Daniel's office to find O'ahka and have her try on her new clothes. When she went into the storage closet to try them on though, she called out a few moments later, sounding rather panicked, "Sam?"
Carter peeked her head inside the closet, and Jack and Daniel exchanged glances. "What is--? Heh." Carter slipped inside the storage room and then slipped back out again looking like the cat who'd swallowed the bird.
"I was going to help her," she said, smirking evilly, "But then I remembered that Daniel has a his polaroid camera in here somewhere."
"What are you going to do?" Daniel asked suspiciously, already looking around for his camera.
O'ahka slipped out of the bathroom questioning, "Sam? Weren't you going to help me put it on right?"
Jack blinked and then cracked up. She was wearing her blouse inside out, backwards, and she had her head through a sleeve. Meanwhile, her pants were right-side out, however, they happened to be a patterned material. It seemed, Jack mused, that two types of flower-prints didn't necessarily go together just because they were both flowers.
Daniel held back his smile as he handed over the camera to Sam, who soon after took a snap-shot of the baffled-looking girl. "Sam," she questioned, "Why is everyone laughing?"
"Oh," Sam declared, innocently, "No reason... Let's go get you fixed up." She took another snap shot, this time of Daniel and Jack looking veiledly amused, then handed the camera back to Daniel and led O'ahka into their temporary changing room.
"Women," Jack murmured happily, and Daniel looked as if maybe he agreed.
o o o
As Sam headed for the infirmary that evening, she mused that, all in all, the modelling show that afternoon had gone nicely. O'ahka was practically preening in her new clothing, and Sam wasn't quite sure who was more pleased with themselves--her and Jack or the little girl with her brand new wardrobe.
She located Dr. Brightman who was patching up an airman's minor injury then waited until she was finished up with him. After the airman had thanked the doctor and left, Sam approached Brightman, wondering, "Are the test results back yet?"
Brightman nodded and replied, "I'll go get those for you right now." She left Sam standing around, and returned a moment later with a folder. She handed it over to the Colonel, and Sam opened it.
She looked it over and then looked it over again. "Is this right?"
"Very. I double-checked it," Brightman assured her.
Sam swallowed and asked, "Do you have a theory?"
"I don't really need theories with that evidence," Dr. Brightman said, "But I think she was responsible."
Sam nodded and murmured a thank you to Brightman and asked, "Can I keep this?"
"Of course," Brightman answered, and Sam wandered out of the infirmary. She felt disjointed from reality. What was she going to tell Daniel? How was she going to tell Daniel? Her mind reeled at the thought of how he might react.
And what would happen to O'ahka? Sam was pretty sure if she went back to her original form, she would fade away like she had the first time. But was it right to let her stay the way she was, especially in light of this discovery?
Sam wasn't sure, but that wasn't what was truly bothering her. What made her the most unsettled was wondering if this was her second chance.
o o o
line from the french children's song--"Alouette". It means: Lark, nice Alouette lark, I will pluck you, Alouette... Or something like that because I found the translation online instead of looking them up myself. Lazy, so lazy...