The two friends were walking down the hallway towards their temporary quarters. Daniel was into childish cranky mode and wasn't letting his friend forget it. He had spent two long tiring days of reading and re-reading Nick's notes and journals trying to make some sense of his ordeal. Then Jack had waylaid him into the disastrous picnic. Now he was dragging his small friend to their shared room to clean up before they headed for the dining hall.
As they left the elevator Daniel's footsteps began to falter. Jack looked down at him with concern and then the small body bent over clutching his abdomen with a moan. "Ja-a-a-ck," he gasped.
O'Neill immediately squatted down next to his friend. "Daniel? Danny, what's wrong?"
The small boy fell to the hard concrete floor writhing in agony. "Jak…can't breathe," he managed to gasp.
Jack grabbed him by the shoulders, slipped his arms under the convulsing body, and lifted the stricken child to his chest. "Danny! Hang on buddy, I've got you. I've got you." Jack struggled to his feet and started running to the elevator a short distance away. "HOLD THAT CAR!"
The two young officers were already in the elevator both shoved their hands against the elevator doors and stepped back as he came barreling in. "Infirmary!" O'Neill snapped. The Captain slid his card through the mechanism and hit the button for the 25 floor.
When the doors reopened, the Lieutenant led the way, running point, yelling for a medic and pushing past the startled personnel that cluttered the hallways. Finally, the small group skidded into the infirmary.
Doctor Lam had heard the shouting and was in position in the emergency area. As Jack approached her, she pointed to the already waiting gurney. When Daniel was placed on the table he immediately curled up into a tiny ball of misery crying out through gritted teeth as she began to examine him. Carolyn tried to straighten his body to have better access but she didn't have the strength to fight the muscle spasms that were gripping the small body.
Jack tried to help, clasping the slender shoulders and pressing them down so she could examine him. Daniel's voice rose in a keening cry of pain. "WHAT'S HAPPENING TO HIM?" He shouted at her over Daniel's agonized cries.
"I don't know!" Carolyn replied, motioning for a nurse to assist. "When did this start?"
"About five minutes ago; just long enough to get him down here." Jack looked at her with fear in his eyes. "Do you…?"
She shook her head. "No, I don't know what's wrong. What did he eat for dinner?"
"We haven't had dinner yet," Jack said looking down at the two small fists that were still wrapped around his fatigue sleeves. "We were headed to the room to clean up when he collapsed in the hall."
Lam pulled her flashlight out of her coat pocket and began to try to check the boy's pupil dilation, but she couldn't get his eyes open. "Daniel, Doctor Jackson, look at me."
If anything the small body convulsed into a tinier mass and a bone-deep groan emanated from him.
Jack wanted to pick up the small frail body and press him into his chest until the pain stopped, but he could only stand there and watch helplessly as the muscles and tendons of the child tightened and flexed. Then he saw it begin to happen. "Doctor Lam, look."
Caroline turned to the General. "What?"
"No, not me…look at him!" O'Neill insisted.
As they watched in shock, the child's body again began to convulse and writhe in pain. The small mass shook and seethed, rocked and flexed and then slowly began to alter, growing larger before their very eyes. The whimpers changed to moans then escalated to keening agony.
Jack watched in horror as the very shape of Daniel's extremities changed. At first, the delicate bones seemed to elongate, then try to burst from the fragile skin covering them. As the changes occurred, the very tendons appeared to snap and pop, almost seeming to dislocate themselves then realign.
"What's he doing?" Jack asked in horror.
"I don't know…it's as if…he's…" Carolyn hesitated, mystified.
"Like he's growing!"
"Jack! Oh, God, Jack!" Daniel cried out, arching up into his friend's hands as the convulsions shook his body.
O'Neill bent down over the pulsating body. "Danny…tell me…what can I do?" He pleaded. He saw in shock that his friend's facial features were as malformed as the rest of the struggling body.
"JAAACCCCKKKKEEEEE!"
"Oh, fuck! Daniel!" O'Neill wanted to grab him and hold him but Lam stopped him before he could. The familiar blue eyes in the pale misshapen face with its morphing features looked up at him. "JJAAAAHHHHHH!"
O'Neill finally jerked loose from the small doctor and he pulled the straining form against him, trying desperately to give some comfort. He could literally feel the physical metamorphosis continue against his chest.
Lam was flatly staring in amazement as the fluctuations continued. The small body was now quickly growing in both size and mass. The small sized clothing split along the seams as tissues oscillated and changed. What had once been a three-foot tall child of sixty pounds was rapidly changing back to a good sized, well-built man of six feet and two hundred pounds. The childish facial features bulged, and then twisted at the radical changes as the delicate features continued to reconstruct themselves. The small hands gripping Jack's uniform splayed and fingers clubbed, elongated, and knotted into talons then changed back into digits. Nails grew into claws that quickly receded. Bloodied bones split through fragile skin to be just as rapidly recovered with flesh and skin.
Lam, realizing what was happening, grabbed a pair of medical scissors and cut through the remaining cotton scrubs that little Daniel had been wearing. Jack continued to try to hold his friend's tortured body on the gurney as they fought the seizures that wracked the younger man. Blood covered all three of them as it seeped from bitten lips, split epidermis, and from O'Neill's and Lam's scratched and lacerated hands from wounds received from their struggling patient.
Finally, as if in one final rictus of agony, the now adult sized body arched up with bone snapping strength, tearing free from his friend's grasp; then collapsed back onto the hospital gurney completely limp and unresponsive.
Caroline quickly leaped onto the patient and was calling for help from the medical team that had gathered around the suffering that Daniel had displayed. "There's no pulse!" She shouted. "Crash cart, now!"
Jack still had hold of his friend's hands. They had been fever hot before and gripping his with painful strength, but now they were limp and boneless in his grasp. He bent over the still form. "Daniel! Daniel! Listen to me! Danny!"
Suddenly he felt strong hands, pull him back as he looked up to see Lam holding two paddles to a defibrillator. He heard her voice as she shouted, "CLEAR!" and applied the machine to Daniel's naked chest.
Again, the body arched up away from the bed, this time in response to the electronic stimulation. The doctor stepped back, then began to ready the paddles for a second use when, suddenly, Daniel took in a deep gasping breath.
Lam immediately handed off the equipment and started to do a quick once over of the patient. Jack could only wait and watch her do her job and realized only peripherally that it was Hank Landry who had hold of him.
"Well?" Landry demanded of Carolyn, asking what Jack could not bear to.
O'Neill could only stare at the petite dark haired doctor, awaiting her pronouncement.
Finally, she looked over at the two men and nodded. "He's stable…and he…he's apparently regained his normal size."
Landry released his old friend and O'Neill returned to the bedside. "Daniel? Danny, can you hear me?'
"J...AA...k?" The pale face lolled to one side, blue eyes at half-mast looking around for the source of the question.
"I'm here Daniel." Jack touched the cool cheek and turned his friend's face to look in his general direction.
"Jaak, wt hpnd?"
For a moment O'Neill was unable to answer; then he said simply, "You grew."
A nurse handed Carolyn a wet cloth and the doctor began to gently wipe the bloodied, bitten lips as she inspected him for further damage.
"You grew like Gingee in Shrek." Jack talked to the shocked patient as the physician continued her assessment. "Scared the shit out of me again. I think I'm headed for total Hammonditis with you."
"Wha..?"
"Daniel, you've already turned me gray. I think I'm headed for bald now."
"Doctor Jackson," Carolyn frowned up at O'Neill then turned to her patient. "Doctor Jackson, how do you feel?"
Her patient blinked up at her. "Hurt…tired." He looked up at Jack's face. "Tired."
O'Neill patted him gently on the hand. "Gee. Imagine that." Daniel winced at the soft contact.
"General, please, could you give me some time with Doctor Jackson? I need to examine him and make sure everything is…"
"Normal?" Jack asked in a suddenly exhausted voice. "It's not. It never is. But then, it's not abnormal either." He looked down at Daniel who grimaced and tried to smile back at him. "It's just kind of unnormally normal for him." Jack looked over at Landry who was standing watching the byplay. "I did warn you about him, you know."
Hank nodded. "Yes. Yes you did."
"You did?" Carolyn was looking at the two Generals. "Why didn't someone warn *me* about him?"
"You probably won't go grey…or bald." Jack replied easily. "Hank will probably do both."
##########
Jack was seated at the bedside of the now full sized Daniel Jackson. He was exhausted, having suffered through the unexpected trip to Colorado, the shock of seeing his best friend changed into a child and now the stress of watching him turn back into his adult self. Jack was determined that he would remain there until Daniel woke up.
Carolyn had been in and out all night too, taking vitals and generally hovering. Jack would smile tiredly and move out of her way. Here was another child that he'd watched grow up from a tiny, exquisite girl into the forceful doctor that now was in charge of the SGC clinic. He felt old.
She stopped next to him. "General, he should be okay. All my test results have returned normal. He's just exhausted…as are you." She eyed him with concern. "You should really rest for a while."
"Yeah, well, I'll rest…when I'm sure."
She smiled at him in understanding and nodded at the nurse's station. "You know where the coffee pot is."
Jack was still sitting at Daniel's bedside when the man began to wake up. First came the movement of the arms, then the head tossing. The soft moans came quickly, and then the blue eyes began to move under the long lashes predicating the opening of the baby blues.
He leaned over and took the nearest hand in his. "Daniel?"
Finally, the eyes fluttered open to peer at him myopically. "Jack?"
"Yeah, buddy. Right here. How do you feel?"
"Sore." From years of practice, Jack could see the thoughts begin to run through the facile mind. "Had the strangest dream…"
He had to smile down at his friend. "No dream, Daniel. More of a nightmare…for both of us.
########
They were gathered in the General's briefing room. SG1 was there looking shell shocked, the two Generals trying to appear calm, and Carolyn Lam was staring at her patient as if she held him personally responsible for the whole fiasco. Daniel was there also, looking very tired.
The physical transformation had completed itself that morning. The young man had continued to age to his correct life stage throughout the night finally finishing in the early hours. Daniel Jackson had once again beaten the odds and survived intact if not completely unscathed. He appeared to be completely exhausted, the infamous blue eyes blood-shot and bleary and he had a tendency to yawn at inopportune moments.
When they were all assembled, Landry indicated that the briefing should commence by clearing his throat. "Doctor Jackson, what do you have for us?"
Daniel looked around the room knowing that the blame for this particular adventure rested solely on his shoulders. "Well," he started, "as best I can translate the glyphs, the hall was a ceremonial chamber. When a warrior did something outstanding to earn a reward he was taken to the room and given a chance to relive his favorite years over again for a period of three days. During that time he was feted, coddled and allowed to enjoy childhood, teen years or whatever period it was."
Sam smiled at her teammate. "He was allowed to play."
He nodded at her understanding. "Exactly."
Landry looked at him with interest. "Your favorite year was when you were six years old?"
Daniel smiled a sad smile. "Seven actually, I was in Egypt with my parents. They had been funded by a museum to excavate an ancient temple. Life was exciting, the work was interesting and I was old enough for my father to take me to the dig with him." He smiled softly at the memory. "I found my first real treasure. It was a little figurine of Bastet, the cat goddess. I remember how proud they both were of me. The whole camp celebrated my great discovery." He sighed. "After that, well, everything got very busy. They worked very hard and finally got the artifacts packed and shipped to the United States the next year. They never got to see the rewards of their labors." He raised his head and looked at Jack. "They died that next spring."
His friend reached across the distance between them and touched his hand. "I'm sorry, Danny."
Daniel looked around the table. "It's all history now. Unfortunately I touched the wrong icon and was rewarded by the temple machinery."
Jack smiled at him. "Gee, what a surprise."
"So this was a reward?" Mitchell demanded disbelievingly. "This was supposed to be fun?"
"Yes, proving once again that one man's treasure is another man's trash." Jackson nodded. "I'm sorry to have caused such a problem."
Caroline Lam frowned at him. "Do you do this often?"
The old SG1 just looked at each other. Daniel ducked his head with a little grin. "Well…"
O'Neill chuckled. "Well, I had brown hair when I met him."
Mitchell reached up to his hair. "Really?"
%%%%%%%
Daniel was helping Jack pack up his clothing for the return trip back to Washington D.C.
"So, you thinking about that job offer Daniel?" O'Neill folded his fatigue uniform and placed it back in the suitcase.
The younger man was wiping down his low quarter shoes. "Oh, is it still open?"
"Absolutely." Jack enthused as he forced his combat boots into the small space remaining. "You'd be a knock out with the society crowd. You could sweet talk all the wives while I schmooze with the big wigs. We would be an unbeatable team." He lowered the lid and sat on the case so he could snap the fasteners closed. "Just like old times, only this time instead of Goulds, it would be politicians and other big wigs…and you wouldn't have to kill anybody."
"Thanks for the offer Jack and I'll definitely keep it in mind, but I'm not quite ready to give up on the Stargate yet," he looked sideways at his old friend. "Or Atlantis."
O'Neill stood up and put the suitcase on the floor. "Smithsonian," he tempted in asingsong voice, "cherry trees, rush hour traffic, all the madness you can think of all wrapped up in one spot and you never even have to leave Earth." He sat back down and took his shoes from Daniel.
"Not yet." The younger man shook his head.
Jack sighed and stood up. His knee popped in emphasis. "Well, okay, but the offer's good whenever you want it."
Daniel bent and picked up the suitcase. "I'll walk you up."
"Thanks, Danny." O'Neill slung his blue general's coat over his shoulder and picked up his flight cap with the two stars on it.
As they walked out the door the sound of klaxons started and they could hear the sound of chevrons snapping into place. The loudspeaker was blaring, "Unauthorized Off world Activation."
They paused in the hall, watching personnel run to their various posts in response to the Stargate's opening. Jack looked back down the hall longingly then he smiled at Daniel. "There's no place like home, Danny. There's no place like home."