Chapter Fourteen - Trevor

Trevor walked out of the tent, his mind still reeling from Grace's admission.

An alien. With psychic powers. Who was afraid to go to the doctor. He hadn't seen any of that coming. Not by a long shot.

If anything, he'd been half expecting that she would thank him for getting her quick, timely medical intervention for her venomous scorpion sting. Well, such as it was in 1928.

"Is she awake?" Jacob approached the tent with an expectant look in his eye.

Trevor bobbed his head once, though he grabbed the younger man by the arm before Jacob could walk inside the tent. "Uh, you might want to wait. She threw me out."

Jacob's eyebrows skyrocketed. "She threw you out? Why?"

Trevor's cheek radiated with heat as he remembered their earlier conversation. "That doesn't matter. All I'm saying is that she's a little emotional. She might want some space."

Jacob's eyes grew hard. "If you hurt her—"

Trevor let go of the man's arm, as shame seemed to harden like a stone in her stomach. "Fine, you do what you've got to do, but whatever happens next is on you."

As Jacob ducked into the tent, Trevor pressed his fingers to his temples. "That went about as badly as it could have."

He flinched only slightly when his fingers caught one of the more badly sunburned patches of his face. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been, thanks to the salve Professor Langford had sent for. It stunk to high heaven, but at least he wasn't in half as much pain as he'd been in the night before.

Well, physical pain, at least.

Professor Langford looked over at him. "Excuse me?"

Trevor just shook his head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."

A faint smile touched the older man's lips. "Trouble in paradise, it seems."

Trevor tried to shake off the nostalgia for yesteryear. "Paradise was a long time ago, and apparently, not quite as beautiful as I remember it."

The scientist smiled over his glasses at Trevor. "Memories can be unreliable in that way."

Trevor bit the inside of his cheek, not wanting to interact with the professor any more than was absolutely necessary, but then again, he had to get some of this off his chest. And he couldn't burden either Jacob or Nicole. If they were going to get home, it might be one thing, but if they were stuck here for any length of time...

"Have you ever learned something about someone that was so opposite anything you ever believed before that you don't know how to process it?"

Professor Langford laughed. "My daughter is nothing like I expected her to be."

Trevor looked at the man in surprise. Based on everything he'd heard of Catherine Langford and her father, she'd been very influenced by him. To hear that Paul Langford was shocked by his own daughter's personality seemed beyond odd to him. "No?"

"She's been bred to be a young lady, and yet, there is a spark of adventure in her eyes that remains. Between you and I, it is a trait which has perplexed and frustrated even the best governesses in England. It's why I brought her here. At least here, I can challenge her intellect. Nurture her courageous spirit."

Trevor followed the professor's gaze to the little girl who was sitting beside Nicole and asking her questions.

Trevor tried not to grimace. The last thing the time-space continuum needed was a curious Catherine Langford learning about the stargate program decades before Daniel Jackson translated the cover stones.

Trevor looked back at the tent. "Yeah, well—"

"You and your comrades speak strangely."

Trevor tensed. "It's a regional dialect thing."

Paul quirked an eyebrow. "Is it? I've never heard anyone around here speak the way you do."

Trevor rubbed the back of his neck. "We're from—far away."

Paul chuckled. "I only ask because I am afflicted with the same curiosity as my daughter. You have no obligation to answer my questions."

Trevor looked at the professor's outdoor desk. "What are you working on?"

Langford moved so that Trevor could look at the papers on his desk. "I know there's something incredible out there. Unfortunately, my days are limited. The Crown is growing weary of this endeavor. I fear that if I am not successful within a fortnight, I will be escorted home in disgrace."

Trevor studied the map with careful notes of what had been found in various locations around the dig site. "What do you think you're going to find?"

Langford reached for a book and thrust it into Trevor's hands. "A ring of some kind, but even that much is speculation. What it does, its purpose in Egyptian mythology, is still a mystery."

Trevor just bobbed his head as he handed the book back. "The pursuit of knowledge is often its own reward, Professor."

Langford studied Trevor for a moment. "You and I may believe this—" The professor blinked. "My apologies. I was so consumed with your friend's illness and resuming my work that I have been terribly rude. What is your name?"

Trevor gulped. "Uh..."

Jacob walked out of the tent, scowling in Trevor's direction. "Burns. Monty Burns."

Jacob tucked something in the folds of his robes and extended a hand. "Me, I'm Bart Simpson."

Trevor closed his eyes in aggravation. Bart Simpson?

Jacob waved over his shoulder. "Thanks for taking care of my sister, Maggie."

The professor graciously responded something about the honor having guests, but Trevor's attention was riveted on the hatred in Jacob's expression. No doubt, Grace was in even worse shape emotionally than she'd been when she'd asked him to leave.

Oh, he couldn't wait to get back to their century. Then, he'd request a transfer to the Atlantis base. There, he wouldn't have to worry about what would happen when his ex-girlfriend talked to her mom and his new boss.

Nor would he have this terrible feeling that he was going to do something stupid and begin a cataclysmic reaction of events in the time-space continuum that could very well end up erasing him, his loved ones, and the life he knew forever.

"Are you sure about this, Jake?" Trevor had guessed rightly that Jacob, still apparently displeased with Trevor about how things had settled with Grace, had gone back to the Prius to try to make the repairs necessary to get them home.

Jacob just frowned as he looked up from under the hood of the Prius. "I'm sorry. Did you invent a time machine in your spare time?"

Trevor bit back a response, and Jacob turned back to his work. "I didn't think so."

"I'm just saying that if things are as unpredictable as they seemed when we got here—"

Jacob didn't move from his spot under the hood. "Actually, Grace had a theory about that. She thought maybe I activated it without knowing."

Trevor frowned at the younger man, crossing his arms in an effort to protect himself from the awful truth. "How?"

"Apparently, I said something about wanting to go back to where it all began. In context, Grace assumed I wanted to see how my parents got involved in the stargate program."

Trevor raised an eyebrow. "You really wanted to come here?"

Jacob shrugged but kept tinkering with the engine. "Daniel Jackson was practically a second father to me, growing up."

A teasing smile tugged at Trevor's lips. "Let me guess, you always wanted to go to Egypt."

Jacob didn't respond, just clanged a few more things under the hood of the car. "Are you telling me you never wanted to?"

"I didn't say that. Even just my trip to Giza last year was pretty exciting." Trevor let his eye rest on the horizon as he watched for some evidence that this was no longer a safe place to work.

The silence stretched between them. "Hey, Jacob, about your sister—"

"None of my business as Nicole pointed out."

Trevor stiffened. "Right."

Jacob was quiet a minute before he set his tools down and faced Trevor again. "You don't know what it's like to know that if people knew who you really were, the most benign of them would just run away. To know that if they were sufficiently frightened, you could end up getting dissected or experimented on."

Shame tugged at Trevor's gut. That's precisely what Grace had said he'd do. It was only natural that he would need some time to wrap his head around this new development, but he hadn't really considered how often Grace would have experienced, or at least feared, that kind of rejection. It seemed like a no-brainer to him that the space he needed was natural, but given her abduction when they were kids, maybe she had been afraid of what he would do when he learned she wasn't as human as he had originally believed.

"I screwed up, didn't I?"

Jacob heaved a sigh as he turned back to the car. "Only if you ever wanted another shot with her, though she's forgiving enough that maybe you'll get a third."

Trevor studied Grace's brother. "You don't think she should give me another chance?"

Jacob's hands stilled, though he didn't stand back up. "As a matter of fact, no."

It stung. Didn't surprise him, but Jacob's flat refusal of a second chance still stung Trevor's pride.

Then, Jacob just groaned and went deeper into the car's engine. Trevor could almost make out one last sentence, strained by the exertion of squeezing into some tight spot. But what the hell do I know?

There was a whirr and a hum, and Jacob brushed his hands together in satisfaction. "Grab the girls, Trev. I think we're back in business."