And now we have the meeting of two worlds! Sort of.
This chapter has a couple of oblique references to various SG1 episodes, namely Hathor and Spirits. Neither of them are explained because, after all, Blair doesn't have clearance.
I'm a little stuck for where to go after this, so the next chapter may be a while in coming. But if you review, I will move faster...I promise.
Have fun, kids. Thanks to my three (!) lovely reviewers!
Blair awoke to the smell of sausages cooking over the open flames and the sound of Daniel talking on a cell phone.
"Yeah, Jack, that would be great. Yes. Yes, I am absolutely, positively sure. I need him here for this dig. Yes, I do think military backup is necessary, even if it's just you. Remember Queen Bitch? Yeah, exactly." He paused for a moment, listening. "Nah, don't bother him. He only gets to see his son, what, twice a year? The situation's not that urgent." He stopped again. "Really? Jacob's in town? Oh yeah, if he doesn't mind, that'd be fantastic. I could really use his help. So it'll be you, Sam, and Jacob? That's great." He paused, then laughed. "No no no, no other geeks necessary. Between Blair and I we've got the mythology part covered." He shot Blair a grin. "Yeah, I marked the spot with an emitter. Sam should be able to track it pretty easily. Make sure you bring those forms. Yeah. Yeah, you too. I'll see you in a few hours." He shut the phone.
Blair had decided the sausages were done and pulled them off their stakes, handing a plate to Daniel.
"Military buddy?"
"My CO. He's coming down with another member of our team and her father. Just the three of them, so it's not like this place is gonna be overrun by the military."
"I take it you got permission, then, to let me in on the big bad secret?"
Daniel took a big bite out of his sausage and chewed thoughtfully.
"Not exactly. You're gonna have to sign a non-disclosure form just for being here. Past that, you're to be told only what you need to know to work."
"I see." Blair sighed. "Well, I guess it's better than nothing."
Daniel snorted. "Just you wait. With our track record, I bet you'll end up knowing far more than you ever wanted to. The guys on base are already taking bets, I heard them talking in the background."
"Bets on what?"
"What sort of trouble I'm gonna get myself into this time."
"Ah. The geek's knack for trouble. Been on the receiving end of that one a couple times." They shared a knowing smile.
After a few moments of contented chewing, Daniel cleared his throat.
"Blair...I think Jim's spirit guide was here last night."
To Daniel's surprise, Blair nodded. "I know it was, Danny. I...I traveled the same way. To Jim. I watched him sleep for a while, as a wolf. Then he woke up, looked me straight in the eye, and asked me who was protecting me." He blushed. "Danny, what did you say to him last night? He seemed pretty pissed."
Daniel shrugged. "I basically just told him to get his head out of his ass."
Blair grinned. "Well, he threatened to come down and get me. Said there was only room for one Blessed Protector for me." His smile faded. "You don't think he would, do you? Come try to find me?"
Daniel cocked his head. "If he experienced the same thing I did, he might have a pretty good idea of where you are. He's a cop and a Sentinel, he knows what I look like, and if he thinks to do a background check he'll realize I'm working for the military. He already sounds jealous of me just for being around you. I don't know, you tell me – is he going to try?"
Blair sighed. "Maybe. Probably. Yes. I don't know." He stabbed at the remaining bits of sausage vindictively. "Where does he get off, treating me like that? I'm thirty years old, even if I am still technically a grad student. I can take care of myself."
"I know, B. I think it's just his nature to be protective, especially of you. A Sentinel-Guide thing. Instinctively, I think he knows that if something happens to you, bad things happen to him. He can't function without you – so he treats you differently than he treats anyone else."
"That's bull," Blair said sullenly. Daniel chuckled.
"It's just a thought."
"Right. So what's up for today?"
"Until Jack gets here, categorical documentation of all the carvings all over the outside. Carbon dating. Checking for a possible way in. I'd like to take a closer look at the top too, at some point."
"A possible way in? Hmm, alright. Toss ya for it."
"Nah, you go ahead. I'm gonna get the dating out of the way. Do it while you do the documentation."
"Right. Hey, D – " he said as Daniel stood up, "it's great to be working with you again."
Daniel smiled and nodded.
Blair was busily inspecting a carved relief at the base of the pyramid when a voice hailed them from the edge of their camp. He looked up to see a women and a pair of men strolling into the area.
All three were dressed casually – jeans, T-shirts, boots – but they held themselves with an upright, military posture he noticed right away. He also couldn't help but notice that all three were carrying – military sidearms at their sides or, in the woman's case, strapped to their leg. The two men were older, silvery hair cropped in close military cuts, the woman closer to Daniel's age, with short blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
Blair dusted off his hands and came over, looking around for Daniel. He spotted him at the top of the pyramid, obviously deeply engrossed in what he was doing. Blair sighed and went to greet the newcomers.
"Hi. You'd be the friends Daniel invited?"
"Yep, that's us. Jack O'Neill." The younger of the two men extended a hand, which Blair shook firmly. "This is Samantha Carter and her dad, Jacob." Blair noticed that they left off their ranks, which seemed fairly strange. While he shook the Carters' hands and introduced himself, Jack pulled off his sunglasses and squinted up at the pyramid.
"That Daniel up there?" he asked, looking down again. Blair nodded, suddenly unable to tear his eyes from Jack's piercing brown gaze.
"Yeah, he's looking at some carvings." Those are hawk's eyes, he thought, startled. I recognize them.
Then the weight of the man's gaze shifted away and Blair found himself sagging a bit from relief. Jack moved away from him, towards the pyramid, and called up to Daniel.
"Daniel?"
"What? Oh. Hi, Jack. Hey, send Sam up here, would you? I think I've got something for her to play with."
"Hello to you too." Jack muttered under his breath. Blair caught the slight motion of his head that gave the woman permission to scale the pyramid. So Jack was in command.
Blair smiled slightly to himself, thinking he had been spending too much time working with Jim. He was noticing things that he never used to notice, anthropologist training notwithstanding.
I'm starting to think like a cop. The thought shocked him much more than it should have.
"So, Mr. Sandburg, what can you tell us about this ruin?" Jacob asked.
"It's Blair. Um. Probably not as much as Daniel, but he's busy." Blair launched into a quick description of what they'd found so far, including the carvings on the top and the prayer around the bottom.
"I think the door is over here. There's a seam in the wall where there shouldn't be. And there's a plaque in Quechua I was in the middle of translating when you got here."
"Can I see it?" Jacob asked.
"Not so fast, guys. Blair, before we do anything else, you have to sign this." Jack held out a form and a pen, which Blair took.
He scanned the form before signing. It was a standard issue non-disclosure form, the sort of thing he'd had to sign when he'd joined Major Crimes as an observer. Jack seemed to relax a bit when he handed it back.
"Right. Carry on."
Jacob gave him an amused eyebrow as he turned to follow Blair to the east side of the pyramid.
"How do you know Daniel?" Jacob asked as they moved.
"He was my TA in college." Blair replied shortly, not knowing how much Daniel had told these people. "We got pretty close, and kept in touch."
Jacob nodded, obviously distracted by the plaque Blair had led them to. He frowned at it.
"You can read this language?"
"Yeah, if I'm given a couple hours with it. It takes some serious figuring. My partner speaks it fluently."
Jacob threw him an eyebrow. "Partner?"
"I've been a civilian observer at a police station for a couple years now."
"Ah. I see." Uninterested, Jacob turned back to the wall. He ran his hands over the seam in the steps. "This is where you think the door is?"
"That's my guess, yeah."
Jacob blew out a breath. "Best bet is probably to get this stuff translated. It might give us some idea of how to get in."
Suddenly the air shuddered around them. Blair looked up just in time to see a wall of golden, shifting light spring into existence around the pyramid. As quickly as it was there, it was gone.
There was silence for a moment.
"Uh. Daniel?" Jack yelled. "What was that?"
"I think we figured it out, sir." That was Sam's voice, floating down from the top of the pyramid. Jack sneered in their general direction.
"Well get down here and tell me what 'it' is!"
"On our way, sir."
Blair and Jacob came around to meet Jack at the base of the steps as Daniel and Sam came back to ground.
"Report, Carter." Jack said. Carter threw Blair an apprehensive glance before straightening and turning to her superior.
"Daniel suspected that the go...dialect at the top of the pyramid had something to do with the place's shielding."
"Shielding?" Blair asked quietly, filing away her slip of the tongue to be analyzed later.
"Remember how we couldn't find it at first?" Daniel muttered to him. Blair nodded, not quite getting it but getting closer.
"Daniel was slightly off the mark. He thought the writings were a compass, but they were closer to a ...lock, I guess. Like one of those barrel bike locks, but with only one ring to turn."
"The platform with the symbols on it turned?" Blair asked. Daniel nodded.
"Sam figured out that the symbol for north was not pointing to polar north, but magnetic north. But it wasn't even right on – it was several degrees off."
Sam picked up the thread. "We turned the platform so it was pointing exactly to magnetic north. You saw what happened."
"Yes, I did. But what did it do?" Jack asked. It was Jacob who answered.
"It covered the hole in the shielding. Now that it's properly aligned, no one outside the shield will be able to detect or enter the area inside."
"Dad? You run into this sort of technology before?" Sam asked quietly. Jacob nodded.
"It's a very old system. It isn't in use much anymore because, well...there isn't much to hide, not that can make use of the planet's magnetic field like this." Jacob crossed his arms and shifted his weight, thinking. "Magnetic north moves around, doesn't it? It must have shifted enough in the past couple thousand years to misalign the shield, and with no one inside to reset it, the gap kept getting bigger and bigger until – " He stopped, turned, and looked at Daniel. "Just how did you learn about this place, anyway?"
"Blair told me about it. Y'know, since it's in the middle of Incan territory. He wanted me to go with him when he went to check on the rumor he'd heard."
"Some rumor." Jack said. Sam looked suspicious.
"You mean, with just a random rumor of a Mayan pyramid in Peru, you managed to find the exact spot you'd need to be in to find it?"
Daniel and Blair looked at each other. "Well..." Daniel said. "We had help."
"Help? Daniel, spit it out." Jack said, annoyed.
"You're not gonna like it."
"I don't like a lot of things. Spill."
"I think that our spirit guides pointed it out." Blair jumped in, when Daniel seemed unable to put it into words. Jack pulled off his sunglasses again and regarded the two anthropologists incredulously.
"Spirit guides?" he asked, drawing out each word. Blair cringed a little, looking to Daniel for help.
"It's a Mesoamerican thing. You remember Tonane?"
Jack cocked his head, thinking, then nodded. "Right. Him. That was a while ago."
Jacob gave Sam a look, and she raised her eyebrows and promised to tell him later. Jack, meanwhile, looked thoughtful.
"These spirit guides of yours. I don't suppose they're wolves?" Jack asked quietly. Daniel blinked.
"Hah." Blair said triumphantly. "I thought so." Daniel had obviously put two and two together because his eyes widened.
"You're – ooooh. Ok then."
Sam and Jacob looked at the three men, utterly confused. Daniel shook his head at them, taking the opportunity to change the subject.
"It's a long story. In the meantime, what have you guys found?" he asked Blair.
"I think we've got the door, but it won't open. Give me some time with it."
"Alright. Jacob, I'd like to take you topside with me and Sam." Daniel said.
"Guess I'll keep Curly here company." Jack said. Blair fought the urge to make a face, settling for a discrete eye roll.
"Yeah, ok, Rambo. Whatever you say." He turned and headed back to the plaque, leaving a blinking Jack and three snickering people behind him.