Spoilers for "Changeling".
Two Days Later
Jack and Sam had decided that it would be best if he was the one to give his son the sex talk. It's a little tardy, since Ty has already been given one at school. They had decided that it was best if all of their children received sex talks from a same-gender parent. Well, mostly Sam had decided. The reality that Sam had been willing to risk doing three talks to Jack's one if this new baby turned out to be a girl should have convinced him, but he would rather talk to three girls than one Ty.
"Hi, buddy," Jack says entering his son's room. The boy is sitting on the floor coloring a picture full of flowers and fairies; not a very promising start.
"Oh, no," Ty says.
"What?" Jack says. He's dreading this conversation, but he had no idea he'd done something to tip his son off to that fact.
"You don't call me 'buddy' very often anymore. When you do, it usually means we're about to have a serious talk."
"Well, we are, but it's not a bad kind of serious," Jack assures his son. They wait in silence for a second. Ty pushes the coloring out of reach. "Your mom mentioned you'd been learning about… reproduction in school," Jack begins.
"Yeah, and puberty; that stuff is nasty. I don't ever want to grow up."
"I just wanted to check with you, and see if you had any questions."
"About puberty?"
"Or… other things. Like reproduction."
Ty considers his father for a long second, and Jack can tell he's measuring him up. Jack tries not to look like he's panicking.
"Yeah, not really about the sex stuff. More the stuff that comes before."
"Kissing?" Jack asks, hoping it isn't anything that comes between the kissing and the sex. They wouldn't talk about those sort of details in school, would they?
"No, like the finding someone you love. All of that mushy stuff."
"Ok," Jack says, finding himself back on comfortable ground. Well, almost.
"What does falling in love feel like? How do you know when you've done it?"
"Well, I think it's a little bit different for every person. You feel comfortable around them, you just fit. You want to spend a lot of time with them, and you can't think about anything else."
"When does it happen?"
"Love? That doesn't usually happen until you're grown up. Crushes are different. Some people start having crushes when they are your age."
"The girls already chase boys around the playground, and say they're going to kiss them. Some of them probably really would if the playground supervisors weren't watching. Lizzie Martins and Toby Wilson are going out."
Jack blinks in surprise. His son has classmates that are dating? "Your sister isn't involved in the running around and kissing boys thing, is she?" he asks with a new panic rising in his heart. Maybe he did pick the easy kid to give the sex talk to after all.
"Emma? No, the only time she does that is when all the kids of SG-1 get together, and play Dannings and aliens, and that's different." Little did Ty know that game was not at all different for one tiny little 'Danning' named Olivia who always found a way to make him her alien.
"Listen, Ty, girls grow up a lot faster than boys do, and that's ok. Each individual person grows up at a different rate. This whole romance/dating thing, that's not something you should rush. You've got plenty of time for dating later on. You should never feel like you should date or flirt or chase girls unless you want to date or flirt or chase girls. Then you should only do those things with someone you actually want to, you understand?" Jack says carefully hoping this gender neutral ending was accepting enough.
Ty nods his head.
"Any other questions?"
"Just one. It's a little more scientific."
Jack cringes, wondering what kind of anatomical question he's going to have to answer. "Ok," he says, hoping he doesn't look as uncomfortable as he feels.
"How did Hannah grow inside of your stomach if you don't have a uterus?"
The Next Day
Shelby walks out of the bedroom with a baby in each arm to see Rya'c wrestling with her sisters in the living room. It's a cross between the martial arts he's been trained in almost since his birth, and something he must have seen on one of those really horrid wrestling shows on TV. She wishes she could monitor his TV viewing more, but he doesn't sleep, while she does.
"They have to finish their homework," she says.
"It's done, and I checked it. They did great," Rya'c assures her.
"Ok, what about your homework?" she asks.
"Finished."
"Well, if you're done with all of your homework, why don't you get ready for an exam in one of your correspondence courses?"
"I'm dropping them," he says.
"What? Why?" she really hopes that the reason doesn't have to do with his girlfriend. Shelby thinks the boy is more than a little obsessed with her. More than he should be at sixteen. Teal'c seems to think that there is nothing wrong with it, which kind of makes her wonder exactly what her husband had been doing at sixteen .
"It's just not that important that I graduate early," the teenager says with a shrug.
Shelby's thoughts suddenly go in the other direction. She knows that Rya'c's girlfriend was a big part of the reason that Rya'c was so serious about graduating with his peers in the first place. "Did you and Amy break up?"
"No, and I'm still going to try to take a class or two over the summer, and graduate in three years. I'm just not trying to do it in two years anymore. It was too much pressure."
"Ok," Shelby says, feeling like she is not getting the whole story. Maybe, if she could just think of the right question to ask, she could get him to confess to everything until this whole story started to make sense. "Was there a certain subject that was hard for you? Maybe I could help you with it some more."
"Ugh! That is so the point. I don't want you to be helping me all the time!" he says in exasperation.
Shelby fights to keep herself from crying, "Right, sorry. I'll try not to bug you all the time."
"It's not that," the boy says, feeling like a heel, "I just mean that sometimes I feel like you ended up helping me when you had more important things that you should have been doing."
"School is very important, Rya'c," she tells him, hoping that the idea of dropping out hasn't occurred to the kid.
"I know, but it's also important for the girls. Talking to those babies is also important. We're doing a unit on human development in Mrs. Jeske's class right now, and we're learning about how important it is to give babies face-to-face time. They are forming neuropathways, and if they don't have social interaction, their brains are stunted."
"I take care of my children," Shelby says, with much more of an edge in her voice than she meant to. It sounded for a minute like he was accusing her of child neglect. To a person who came from a neglectful home, that was no small matter.
"I know, but Bra'tec said that I'm old enough to be taking something away from the pile instead of adding it on. Well, actually, his words were a lot more Jaffa-like and noble-sounding, but they meant the same thing."
Shelby's heart shatters a little, and she walks over to give the boy a hug. "Rya'c, you can't drop your classes. You've already done a big chunk of work in both of them, and we are not about to waste all of those late-night study sessions. I love that you are willing to sacrifice for your sisters. It means a lot to me. More than you will ever know. You're not going to though. I was a child that ended up raising children. It's not right. I'm not going to let it happen to you."
Rya'c looks down at the girls who are still sitting on the floor, even though the wrestling match ended a long time ago. He doesn't know that much about the Dunn family's history, only what his father told him during his scoldings whenever he was disrespectful to his stepmother. He has figured out, though, that she was very young when she started being a mother.
"You were a child then. I'm not a child."
"You are, honey," Shelby says sadly.
"Not like you were. I know that I'm not an adult. I sort of like this life state you humans have invented and called adolescence. Most planets don't have it, you know. I don't really want to be an adult, not yet anyway. I certainly don't want to be a father. I do, however, want to be a big brother. I want to spend time with the little kids. Maybe even some time with the babies. I draw the line at diapers, though. That is a human invention that I do not support. Maybe I can keep doing my classes, but only at night, on my own, without taking up a whole bunch of your time. I might not get as good grades, but that would be fine."
"You don't need as much help as you used to, but you'll still ask for my help if you get stuck, right?"
"Ok," Rya'c says.
"I'm old enough to help, too!" Becky Lynn says, rushing into the kitchen to do the dishes.
"I'm going to make faces at Lexi so her neptunes grow right," Tamara says, taking the baby out of Shelby's arms.
"Neurons," Rya'c corrects.
In a few days the girls' youthful enthusiasm for helpfulness dies down, but Rya'c's does not.
Two Months Later
There are dangers in loving a good man. The dangers are even greater if you dare to love a good man who is also strong, and brave, and who saves the world on a regular basis.
It's a darn foolish thing to love a man like that.
Shelby knew that all too well.
Her husband was laying in his hospital bed, because he'd shared his symbiote with Bra'tac. It was the right thing to do of course, because Bra'tec was also a good man. Bra'tac had also saved countless worlds, and countless lives.
The only flaw in the plan was that the sacrifice was probably for nothing. Both of them were probably going to end up dead.
"Teal'c," she whispers to him, running her hand over his face. It's a sign of affection among the Jaffa. More private and intimate than kissing. It's something that he does for her whenever she is feeling distressed. She wishes that doing it to her husband's unconscious body had the same effect on her that it had when he did it to her.
Hammond walks into the room, "I think we have a solution. Tretonin."
"The scientists have been working on that for months, and they haven't gotten anywhere. He needs a symbiote. Someone needs to get my husband a symbiote. Hell, if the rest of you are too scared, I'll go and get one myself."
"At this point, he's so weak that it might not work. His body could reject the symbiote," Janet says sadly coming up behind the General.
"We have to try. We don't have another option. I can tell you right now that that magic medicine they've been testing on the rats is not going to work," she says firmly. Her husband is dying, and she would do anything to save him. She's not going to try a bunch of experimental procedures though. Not when something else shows a greater promise of working.
"We're not the only ones who have been working on it. We gave some samples to Area 51, and they've made some good progress. *
"How good?" Shelby asks.
"I would not be endorsing this plan unless I felt it was Teal'c's best chance," Janet says.
Shelby looks at the older woman for a long second before she backs down. She trusts Janet. She's seen the women make a lot of tough decisions under a lot of fire. It's not like they are always the right ones. No-one is that good. But Janet manages to keep a lot of people alive in situations where no-one else could.
"Ok," she assents.
The Next Day
Teal'c opens his eyes. Before, when they were closed, he saw things that were not there. He is startled by this, scared by it, and then he remembers that it has a name: dreaming. This is not the first time that he dreamed. He did it, long ago, when he was just a boy before his prim'ta. It was a century ago, so it was no wonder that the act seemed unfamiliar to him now.
Panic fills his heart as he remembers; Jaffa don't dream. Well, to be more accurate, they do dream, but only when their symbionts are dead, and they are close to death.
His hand reaches over and punches the button which calls the nurses with all of his might.
It's his wife who arrives. She's not wearing her uniform, and it's clear the only reason she is here is him. This isn't at all surprising, since she hasn't gone back to work after the twins were born, but it's a bad omen all the same.
Worse than that, her eyes are rimmed in the tell-tale sign that she's been crying. It takes a lot to make his wife cry. Being abused didn't do it. Being abandoned didn't do it. The only think he'd ever seen do it before was things that she'd perceived as her own personal failings.
Apparently, widowhood was also capable of doing the trick.
"I'm dying, aren't I?" he asks her.
"No, what makes you say that?" she asks, coming to sit down on the edge of his bed.
"I dreamed," he says.
"You dreamed about yourself dying?" she asks, seeming relieved that that is the only cause of his statement.
"No, it was… complicated dream, but it was not of my death. Jaffa do not dream."
"Well, Jaffa with symbiotes don't dream," Shelby says, looking nervous. When she saw that the plan had worked, she had concluded that she had made the right choice. Now, looking at her husband, who was very much alive, it occurred to her for the first time that he might not exactly see it that way.
"All Jaffa have symbionts, that is the definition of the species," he says.
"That might not be true anymore," she says with a flinch, "See, you shared your symbiote with Bra'tac in order to keep him alive until help came. It worked, you both made it, but your symbiote couldn't handle the stress. Janet put you on tretonian. It seems to be working as your immune system now."
"Why has another symbiote not been procured?" he asks angrily.
"Well, it's not as if the things were just laying around; besides, Janet thinks that even if she could get you one, it might not do any good. Your body would probably reject it."
"Nonetheless, it should be tried."
"Hey, I thought that in the beginning as well. But not now, I mean, now we know that the tretonian is working. The symbiote only might work. To switch now would be madness."
"I am Jaffa," he says firmly.
Shelby realizes with a start that this would be very hard for her husband. That losing his symbiote is as big of a hit to his identify as gaining one would be to her.
"You're the same person you were a week ago."
"I was Jaffa," he corrects.
"You're still Jaffa, Teal'c." He doesn't respond for quite some time, so she finally mutters, "Anyway, I'm glad you lived, even though apparently you aren't."
"Without me, who would care for the children?" he says without the tone of a sneer, but she knows that if he was human, or at least if he was more human, his voice would have had that quality to it.
Selby took a psychology class back in nursing school. She knows that lashing out like that is normal for someone in pain, particularly emotional pain. She knows that she shouldn't take it personally. But all of that training goes out the window when it is your own husband who is saying something unbelievably cruel to you. Shelby gets up, and walks out of the room.
Three Days Later
There are definitely some down sides to Teal'c's newfound need to sleep. He is a lot less able to deal help with their growing family. It does have one huge benefit that Shelby can't deny.
The first night that Teal'c is home from the hospital, she curls up in his arms, and finds something that she has been missing; strong arms around her all through the night.
*We come to the first part of the story where I regret not having SG-1 meet the Tok'ra. I figured I could save Jacob another way, and we wouldn't need the Tok'ra in our story. That has actually worked quite well, right up until now. I'm just going to make humans a little more awesome than they were in the story, so that Teal'c doesn't have to die.