Chapter 4
Troubled Intuition
It had taken Daniel some time, but he began to connect the text he had been translating around the pedestal with where he was now. But understanding what had happened, at least as much as he could without having Samantha Carter's degrees, and knowing what to do about it were two different things. It had been bad enough living through this nightmare the first time; he really didn't want to do it again. He thought for sure that with his more mature, older outlook, even if through a child's eyes, he should find a way out of this. And yet, he was still sitting huddled in the darkness, and the nightmare went on.
His mind may have been old, but his body was much younger than he was used to. Even taking aside adjusting to being so much smaller, he found that the way his mind worked didn't seem to be the same. Even as his world was now huge, everything inside him was so much bigger too. His emotions overwhelmed him. When the giant came, threatening pain and darkness, everything left of his older mind fled leaving him paralyzed in his fear, a shaking, sobbing, screaming little boy. Intellectually he knew it wasn't a giant; Daniel was just small. And when he was left alone, locked in a closet or in his room, the sense of being completely and utterly alone would overwhelm him, drowning him in his sorrows.
Conversely, when he did find fleeting moments of happiness, he found those moments equally as strong. And he did find happiness; his young mind was easier to distract and that coupled with his quick intellect would provide him with an outlet for laughter. But he didn't laugh out loud; that was one lesson he retained, the ability to be completely silent and hold everything inside, at least until provoked by pain. Then nothing he did could hold back tears, and though at the time he didn't care, only wanting escape, afterwards he felt absurdly embarrassed, his older mind taking back over and finding his inability to stop crying repulsive.
The first time around, when he really was eight years old, newly orphaned and still unfamiliar with America, he didn't have a clue what to do after he was sent to this large and frightening man's home. He had been too terrified to tell anyone, not knowing who to tell anyway, or even if anyone would care if he did. Now he had been there for one day, and he already felt the same, tight, trapped feeling that got into his chest and made it difficult to breathe. He was helpless again, and he hated it.
But this time around, he wasn't really eight years old. He had already proven that, using Teal'c's move to send the giant to the floor. That had never happened the first time. At least he felt fairly confident it hadn't; to be honest most of what he remembered from the first time were from his nightmares and a sense of incredible pain and fear, not very much concrete. The longer he stayed there, though, the more true images came back to him, leaving him shaking and gasping for breath. But the point was that he wasn't really a child, even if he felt like one or looked like one. And, using his older, more knowledgeable mind, this time he would escape.
He closed his eyes, because if his eyes were closed he couldn't see that he was surrounded by darkness and he couldn't see how alone he was and, really, he couldn't see that he couldn't see. Then he tried to remember what it was like sitting with Teal'c while he explained how to kelno'reem, trying to let go of his fear, and of the pain that coursed through his body and split in jagged waves through his thoughts so that he could think of nothing else. He sat like that for a very long time.
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Sam hated and loved being ten again. On the one hand, she hated how big everything was. She hated how she couldn't reach anything properly. She hated how she wasn't prepared for her own emotions, how sharply everything seemed to touch her. Even as a real ten year old, she never would have started crying because Mark pulled her hair and called her names. She would have spun around at him swinging, and even if he was bigger she had often gotten the better of him in a fight. But now everything seemed to touch her so sharply, and she would cry, and she cried when her mother came to find out what was the matter just because it was her mother, and then when she laughed she would cry because the laughter was so huge inside her.
The scientist in her, however, was intrigued by this chance to study childhood with an adult's perspective. And parts of it were fun. It was amazing how much fun it could be just to swing upside down. She could be silly without getting weird looks; she could wear dresses and like to play war and it worked. Most importantly, she could spend time with her mom, re-remember all those little things that had faded from her memory over the long years. And even if she cried, it often felt cleansing. She was allowed to cry.
What she also loved about being ten, but still with her adult mind, was how easy it was to get away with things. For instance, she was now hiding in the basement surrounded by appliances she had stolen from around the house and taking them all apart and she knew she could get away with it. She knew how to hide what she was doing better now, and even if she was caught the worse thing that might happen was kid stuff. Being confined to her room, loss of allowance, none of that mattered anyway. What did matter was that an ancient looking hairdryer was now outfitted with bits from a metal detector which in turn was redesigned with the help of two watches, pieces from a train set, and a radio antenna.
She worked on it in pieces, at times completely engrossed in the task but at other times she found it absurdly difficult to concentrate or to keep what she was trying in her head. And she often found herself adding bits that offered nothing whatsoever to what she was building but that made it look cool. Despite all of this, and only having had a day so far in which to work, she had made incredible progress. Even though her young mind often found it harder to concentrate for long stretches, she also found that her thoughts were much clearer and sharper than ever before and she moved forward in her design in leaps and bounds, often working through pure intuition more than a strong scientific understanding.
That night, her thoughts on the machine she was building completely filled her, not unlike the excitement of Christmas or the science fair used to when she was small. She lay in bed while her mother tucked her in and told her a story about an amazing man walking on the moon, and about how far astronauts would one day go. She fell asleep that night with the scent of her mother's perfume, still feeling her mother's kiss, and in that sleepy moment just before dreams took her, she knew that everything was perfect.
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Jack was having trouble sleeping. He knew that his mother had to know by then that he had never gone back to the academy. He should have called her around the time that his bus would have gotten him there and told her he had made it all right. In fact, he had intended just that, but when it came to it, he felt awkward lying. So he had put it off, opting instead to look up Daniel and Sam, and had forgotten all about it. And he still hadn't gotten hold of Daniel, though he had tried again, going so far as to suggest he thought the family Daniel was with might be hurting him. The annoying woman on the other end sounded alternatively bored and annoyed, and gave no implication of acting on Jack's information. At the same time, she refused to give him anything.
Now he was trying to sleep, having joined another group of kids heading in the right direction. He knew that if his luck held he would be in New York tomorrow, and he hated having to stop for the night but he wasn't the one driving and he wasn't about to try and hitch a new ride at night. He had also already gone through a good deal of his money on phone calls and food, and he was starting to worry about what he would do once he finally found Daniel. For that matter, what were they all going to do when they did all finally get back together? He hoped the two scientists would be able to figure it out because he didn't have a clue.
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Many miles away, Teal'c was wondering much the same things, except that he was at the disadvantage of not knowing the fates of any of his teammates, as well as having even less of an idea of what was going on. He had, however, used that day to verify that he was indeed in the past. After discovering the date, he had spent the day walking in single direction, having been strangely drawn there. He had long ago learned to trust his instincts, and his instincts told him to keep going. He only hoped that in the end, it would pay off.