three
Jack's not sure if he's more upset because they exist, or because he wasn't told about them.
"They didn't want to tell you, because you wouldn't have wanted them to do it," Hammond announces, as though he's reading Jack's mind.
"Damn right I wouldn't have wanted them to do it."
"They didn't just do it for you, Jack."
Jack's not egotistical enough to believe that they'd all 'sacrifice' themselves just for him. He's more inclined to believe Daniel or Carter realized it would be a way to semi-immortalize themselves and persuaded the others it was a good idea. Jack might have been persuaded himself, he thinks, if he'd been given the choice. After all, being young again would have to have its perks. Particularly along the lines of knees that worked and hair that was still the right color.
"Someone should have told me."
Morally Jack has a right to be upset, but realistically everything is need-to-know, and quite frankly, Jack didn't need to know.
"Maybe," Hammond says, "but what good would it have done?"
None at all, Jack admits reluctantly.
"Jack," Hammond sighs, sounding old. "Bring them back safely."
A funny smile tugs at Jack's lips, and he looks at Hammond still seated in his chair. "Why does it feel like I'm taking them on a field trip?"
Hammond smiles too. "They're not kids, Jack, as much as they might look like them."
Jack remembers his robot clone on Altair. He remembers dropping his mini-clone off at school. Both times he'd felt uncomfortably relieved that it wasn't him, even though they were the same person.
"I better not find anything about baby-sitting on my resume," he says.
"As long as you make sure Dr. Jackson doesn't touch anything he's not supposed to touch."
Jack thinks Hammond looks entirely too innocent.
---
They troop into the gate room one after the other, looking far too young to be carrying weapons and balancing packs on their backs. As it is, the BDUs are too big even for Teal'c who's still the most solid out of all of them, and his staff weapon towers over his head.
Carter wears her hair long now, and it's tied back in a neat, regulation braid hidden beneath the large shadow of her Kevlar helmet that's too big for her head. She stares at him stubbornly, daring him to comment on her appearance, and Jack wisely turns his gaze to Daniel.
Daniel's hair is shaggy again, but Jack's relatively relieved to see Daniel kept up the use of contacts – glasses and field work just didn't go well together in the past. The BDU sleeves are rolled up, and Jack raises an eyebrow when he catches sight of a bright blue T shirt poking through the rather large gaps between the buttons.
The clone which started this entire mess is the smallest out of all the four clones before him. Jack recognizes his familiar stance, hands in pockets and a blank look on his carefully controlled, very young features. Jack lets his gaze rest for a minute on the distantly familiar lines of his clone's face, before looking up at the control room where Hammond is waiting.
"We're ready, sir," he says finally.
Next to Hammond, Sergeant Harriman looks completely gob smacked at the presence of the four teenagers in the gate room, and Jack wonders idly if Hammond has informed the rest of the SGC who exactly these children are. He almost wishes he could see people's reactions, but something about watching people meet the clones of his dead team mates is unnaturally painful.
"Dial out," Hammond orders.
Jack watches the clones as the gate dials; they look apprehensive but he can detect a glimmer of excitement on Carter's face and a look of relief on Teal'c's. He realizes that maybe life hasn't exactly been easy for them, and maybe they regret making the decision to clone themselves.
As the gate locks into place, Jack thinks about his own Carter, and wonders what she'd thought when she woke up and saw her clone for the first time.
---
The planet is quiet and secure, Hammond said, and the ruins are abandoned. Daniel's clone almost hyperventilates at the sight of the huge stone columns and buildings and broken rooms, his eyes bulging with excitement. A strange, enthusiastic staggering of his feet reminds Jack of Daniel's very first forays through the gate. Jack wonders when Daniel became so jaded that he failed to skip and dance and bounce with excitement at the sight of new ruins.
Rittevon and Parkes, the resident geeks under the care of SG-9, look shocked to see four children under Jack's care, until Jack explains who the children are. Then they look absolutely stunned, and neither of them can string together a coherent sentence for several minutes. The members of SG-9 are much the same, though they do manage to keep their mouths from hanging open in surprise.
"God, I hate BDUs," the Daniel clone mutters irritably. He glances at Jack, and tips his head back defiantly. "I can't move," he states.
"What do you want me to do?" Jack demands.
The clone's eyes narrow. "You're even more of an ass when you're old than when you're a teenager," the clone says pompously before dumping his pack on the ground and unbuttoning the BDU jacket.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jack demands, staring at the unexpected behavior.
"Getting rid of the damn things."
"You can't do that!"
"Why not?"
Jack had forgotten how much Daniel annoyed him at times. Funny how death makes you remember people's good points and gloss over their bad.
"You're on a mission!"
"So? I can't move in these things!" By now, the clone has stripped off the jacket and is working on shedding his trousers. He struggles with getting the legs over his boots though, losing his balance and landing on his ass.
"Nice," Jack's clone says breezily. "That was almost as graceful as the last time in gym."
"That was your fault," the Daniel clone counters sharply, tugging ineffectually at the trousers. "Damn it. Sam, give me a hand?"
"How is you making an idiot of yourself my fault?" Jack's clone asks, watching as the younger Carter grabs hold of Daniel's trousers and starts tugging.
"Daniel Jackson is correct, O'Neill," the Teal'c clone inserts, also watching as the two clones struggle with Daniel's trousers. "You did tie his shoelaces together."
The Carter clone succeeds in tugging one leg free of a boot, and moves onto the second. If they weren't on another planet, and they weren't the clones of his dead team mates, Jack would find the spectacle of Carter dragging Daniel along on his ass by one leg of his trousers pretty damn funny. However, they are on a mission, and missions didn't usually involve archaeologists offering everyone a free strip-how, much less a strip-show that involves a Major in the USAF undressing him.
"Excuse me, but does the word 'mission' ring a bell for anyone?" Jack demands.
"Chill, Jack," Daniel's clone grunts. "Sam! That hurts!"
"You should have taken your boots off first," Carter snaps, tugging again. The trousers jerk free of Daniel's boot, and the clone stands up, dusting off his jean-clad backside and straightening his bright blue T Shirt.
"Okay, now I'm ready," the clone announces, gathering up his abandoned BDUs and stuffing them back into his pack.
"You sure you don't want a cup of tea?" Jack asks acidly, glaring at the clones. They're acting like children, he thinks with disgust, instead of the trained professionals they supposedly are. Maybe somehow during the cloning process, Thor stuffed up and reverted their brains back to adolescents as well as their bodies.
"That attitude is what's making your hair turn gray," Daniel's clone says after a few moments of following in silence.
Jack wonders if killing Daniel's clone would be counted as murder, seeing as the real Daniel is technically dead.
---
Hammond had told them the planet was secure, abandoned and untouched for a long time. Jack makes a mental note to tell Hammond that whenever he says something along those lines, it always backfires and SG-1 ends up in trouble.
"Hurry it up!" Jack yells, aiming his P-90 up at the swooping death gliders.
"It's not that easy, Colonel!" Carter's voice, even yelling at him, sounds so much higher and more girly than he's used to.
"We can't hold these bastards forever!" Captain Delaney yells over to Jack, his P-90 also spitting bullets at the oncoming craft.
"Damn it, Carter!" Jack yells. "Cover me!" he orders SG-9.
The clones, minus Teal'c who is with SG-9, are all crowded around a familiar device attached to the wall.
"Oh, crap," Jack says, realizing what it is. "That… that thing…"
"Yeah," his clone agrees, understanding.
It's strange to have someone understand what it was like with all that stuff in his head, and Jack looks at his clone for a second before looking back at the device stuck to the alien wall.
"We need to get that information downloaded," Carter is saying, "but I haven't got time to interface it before Anubis' forces arrive."
"They've already arrived," Jack points out sharply.
Carter rolls her eyes at him, and then looks slightly surprised at her rudeness. "Sorry, sir," she mumbles, blushing.
"Just work on getting the damn thing downloaded!" Jack snaps, turning to look at the clear blue sky.
"You don't understand, Colonel," Carter says, "I can't do it in two minutes. We have to destroy it, or Anubis will get it."
"Destroy it?" Jack repeats dumbly, looking down at Carter.
Blue eyes, so achingly familiar, meet his evenly. "I can't do it, sir," she says quietly.
He nods. "Fine, fall back to SG-9. I'll set the C-4."
"I'm sorry, sir," she says, licking her lips.
"Just go, Carter," He snaps impatiently. "You too, Daniel. And you… you."
His clone grins briefly at the stumbling order, and Jack thinks that he's the only person he knows who would find that remotely amusing. Despite the situation, the awkwardness and the unreality of everything, a smile tugs at his lips. Someone with his sense of humor… excellent.
"You're not going to, are you?" his clone asks, ignoring the order.
"Not going to what?"
"Plant the C-4."
Jack scowls at his clone. Someone with his tactics too, apparently. "Follow you orders," he tells his clone.
"I should do it," the clone says abruptly. "They need you at the SGC. I'm just… a clone."
Death gliders are flying overhead, and the air is filled with the rattle and scream of weapons and battle. Jack stares at his clone. "No," he says honestly. "I'm an old man. My knees are shot and my team is dead. You… you still have your team and your knees. Not to mention the hair. You and the clones are what the SGC needs now. They don't need me."
"Jack…" His clone stops after saying his name, staring up at him.
Jack shakes his head. "We need this knowledge," he says quietly. "I have to do it, and you have to be there for the SGC now. All of you. Things are heating up, and earth needs them more than me."
"Carter and Daniel were stupid enough to believe they were irreplaceable," the clone scowls.
"They're right," Jack agrees quietly. "So you need to keep an eye on them and their egos."
The clone hesitates for a second. "Don't take too long," he says, and turns away to give Jack privacy as he sticks his head into an alien machine.
He hopes, vaguely, that it won't be as bad this time as it was last time. His eyes have barely shut before the device grabs him, and his last thought is wondering whether his clone might remember how to speak Ancient.
---
"I told you not to touch anything!" Hammond snaps angrily, glaring at Jack.
Roomy or not, it's not like Jack's happy about having his head turned into a storage archive again. "No, sir, I believe you told me to make sure Daniel didn't touch anything."
"Me?" Daniel splutters. "If we look back on all missions, Jack gets us into trouble more than I do."
"You died more than I did."
The words hang in the air, a dark crystal of nightmares Jack's trying very hard to escape.
"Apparently," Daniel whispers.
The crystal shatters and Jack wonders how his world became so fucked up.
---
Sorry I'm not posting more now – have run out of time. This fic is finished, I just have to upload and post.
Please leave some reviews – constructive criticism (and blatant praise/worship) is adored! Heh.