In Lord Iblis's Secret Service

Part: 3

Rating: PG, maybe be PG-13 later on

paring: ensemble cast

Summary: Sometimes when everything goes bad in your life, it gets better in the weirdest way possible. Kind of a play on RDM's "everyone gets what they want in the worst possible way" comment.

Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica and its characters are creations of Glen Larson and copywrited by Universal Studios. Stargate and its characters are creations of MGM. We make no money off this.

Good Luck

He tried to concentrate on the textbook and failed. His leg hurt. It was stupid and dumb and certainly in his head, but his lower right leg was burning. It had happened before. He knew the pain. It was the phantom leg cramping, nerves trying to react to a limb that was gone. He had been lucky, luckier than most of Dr. Cottle's patients. Singing worked as a distraction, and he knew he had been luckier than any number of people in the fleet.

Singing worked, and people liked his singing which meant when he was having a bad night he could just head down to the bar and sing. Not only did it help, but people thought he was coping. When it started happening in Iblis's fortress, despite his leg being there, regrown from the sarcophagus, he had just added it to the many other things that made him think he had lost his mind. There had been some fairly lengthy periods early on where he was certain he'd had a complete break with reality.

Then again, Felix thought as he took off his shoe and tried to massage the pain away, it wasn't as though reality hadn't taken a wild turn. He had regrown his leg, he had seen alien creatures enter his body, and worse he had felt them enter his body and rip control away from him. He had then been rescued by people from Earth. And now his regrown leg, that even had freckles where his old leg had them, was hurting with the phantom pain of the lost limb.

And he couldn't sing. He had been in the sick bay of the command center for seven days and the team that had rescued him had gone out and come back again and… The civilian scientist Daniel had died. He hadn't had more than a few conversations with Daniel, and those had mostly been talks about the religion of the Twelve Colonies and translation requests, but it was obvious that the man had been well liked.

The body had been removed hours earlier but people were going in and out. Daniel Jackson had obviously been well liked and people were very upset. No one was in the mood for a song. He had been indulged on the Galactica, partly because he had lost a limb, and partly because he had a better voice than even he had realized. Singing did make people feel better, he had learned that and more from the cancer patients who had spent a lot of their time encouraging him, despite their own pain, but he sensed that it would be misinterpreted. The pain of the people in the base was still too raw, and they clearly weren't used to losing people at all.

He tried a variation of a different therapy. Cottle had suggested mirror therapy, reflecting his good leg to trick his brain into letting the phantom leg unclench and relax. That hadn't worked well, but he had a real leg to work with. He leaned forward on the hospital bed and grabbed his right foot in a runner's stretch. "I can feel you," he said as he gripped his toes and stretched. "You're not on fire… I'm touching you…."

The worst of the pain eased off and he decided to get out of bed and put on his shoes. He had been very sick the last three days. Feverish and congested with something Dr. Fraser called influenza, and she had been more worried than he had thought was necessary. He felt better, and for a change, he felt hungry. Aside from his initial foray to the cafeteria, his meals had been brought to him, and he hadn't felt hungry anyway, with the fever. But there was a clock and with the excitement and tragedy, it had been almost twelve hours since anyone had brought him anything. He saw no reason to make a fuss about it. People were upset and they didn't need to feel worse.

Dr. Fraser was bent over her desk. She was crying and trying to fill out paperwork and he made sure to not disturb her as he slipped out. He felt bad for her. She seemed to be taking Dr. Jackson's death very hard. I'll bring her something, he thought.

He was lucky that the short order cook, Marietta, remembered him because for a long moment upon stepping into the large cafeteria, he was overwhelmed. It had been years since he had actually picked out a meal and he still wasn't sure what the etiquette was. Marietta, who had clearly been crying as well, took pity on him and after finding out that he was getting a meal for both himself and Dr. Fraser, took charge. She loaded up his tray with bowls of chicken noodle soup and bread and more of the orange juice that she swore by. Everyone needs to eat at a time like this, she had said as she added some cookies with dark brown specks onto his tray. He didn't protest any of her choices, she had brought his meals to him on at least one other occasion when he hadn't felt well enough to get out of bed.

He returned to the small medical area. Dr. Fraser hadn't moved, although she did wipe her eyes and stand up when she saw him enter. "Oh Felix, I'm sorry… we completely forgot about you being here…"

"It's all right… I understand." He held out the tray. "I thought you might want something… Marietta said you would like it."

"Thank you." She took the tray and set it on her desk, and then pulled a chair over for him. "I am sorry," she said again as she gestured for him to sit down.

"Things were really… hectic," he said hesitantly. "I liked ….I'm sorry he died." The man had been good to him, quick to ply him with questions about translations, but he had also been very nice about explaining some of the not so obvious customs and facts about Stargate Command. It had been Dr. Jackson who had brought him some history books about the United States and Earth history in general, and who had been quick to insist that other researchers leave him alone when he took ill.

"It's… difficult." Dr. Fraser stirred her soup pensively. "You know it's part of being in the military but… Daniel… was my friend."

"It's never easy," he said after a moment. He didn't exactly dive in to his meal, but he was hungry and the food at Stargate Command tasted incredibly fresh compared to the way he had been fed in captivity with the Goa'uld or to the meager, tasteless rations that the Galactica had.

Fraser watched him. "Do you know what you're eating?"

"Um…. Chicken noodle soup?" He looked down at it, suddenly worried. There were definitely some different foods on Earth, he already loved the orange juice and the round, rind covered fruit was delicious and different than anything he'd ever tasted, but chicken noodle soup wasn't new. Before everything had run out, the mess hall on the Galactica had made a good version. The SGC's version was delicious, with little pieces of celery, firm noodles and nicely sized chunks of chicken.

After a moment, Fraser grinned. "I'm sorry… I meant did you know what chicken noodle soup was, was it something you had on your home world, not that something was wrong with it."

"Oh." He looked down at the bowl. Suddenly it was funny. "Yes, we had chicken noodle soup on Caprica." A memory came to him. "We used to have chicken noodle soup for lunch every day at one of the children homes I lived at. That was a long three months." He grinned suddenly. "It was good training for life. I think I can eat just about anything."

"Fortunately you don't have to prove that," Fraser said as she sipped her soup. "You know, we know this has been a hard transition for you…"

He shrugged as he stirred his soup. "I guess, all things considered, that I am possibly the luckiest man who ever lived." It was something that he had thought about a lot in the last few days and he felt a real need to say it out loud. If only to distract Dr. Fraser, who seemed to be beating herself over a death he knew couldn't have been prevented. He could see that she wanted something other than the day's events to think about and.. He liked her.

And she was attractive and he hadn't felt that about a woman in a very long time. He wasn't fool enough to think it would go anywhere but…"I admit, for a really long time, I never considered myself very lucky…"

"Why not?" Janet asked, her expression suddenly curious. "I mean… aside from the obvious issue of being held and tortured by the Goa'uld for years?"

"That's part of it though." He took a deep breath. "It's like I have to have some really bad luck for my good luck to kick in. My biological parents weren't married, my mom gave me up as soon as I was born, and I went from foster home to foster home…And then I was adopted and that was really good luck because its hard to even get a foster home once you're not little and cute. I got assigned to the Galactica, and I thought that was bad luck… until it was the only warship to survive the Cylon attack on my home planet. Then I lost my leg over nothing and got dumped through a stargate on accident because someone bumped into me while I was examining it and got stuck for ten years being treated worse than a slave… but I think there's an upside here."

He hoped anyway. It felt right, but saying it out loud made him nervous.

Janet reached out and took his hand. "What kind of upside?"

Felix hesitated only for a moment. "It's like getting a do-over in pyramid." He wiggled his toes. "I have my leg back. It hurt, I can honestly say I would have preferred to not… fall into the gate and go through what I did, but it can't be undone. The downside is that it did happen, and its hard to even think about, I will probably always have nightmares, and I most likely will never see my own people again…. But, I am getting a do-over. I have my leg back, I haven't aged physically and I am on Earth. I get a chance to start over….it's a little intimidating… but also pretty lucky. Really lucky." He tried to smile. "Not everyone gets a second chance."

She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "I think you've earned your do over, Felix."

finis