Try Again (abandoned version)

by Tefnut

The related article - The finished fanfic

The man in the grey tunic leered at the woman in the brown dress. He whispered four names in her ear.

"I am not impressed," she enounced with disdain. "This information was easy to get."

The grey man sniggered. Admittedly, when the scanner had skimmed through the strangers' mind, it hadn't encountered any resistance; not even from the Jaffa. That was unexpected. "Times have changed," he said.

"For the better."

None of their people had died from the war for a long time. All things considered, none of them had lived, either. The grey man often wondered if this was not, after all, worse than death itself. "Maybe times have come for new changes."

The brown woman scowled at him before returning her attention to the room below. "This one!"

Grey stared at the man she'd pointed at, searching in him what was eliciting such a reaction from his partner. The stranger's body was very similar to the others', and so was his clothing. From all the brain patterns Grey had scanned before, his differed no more than they should, considering that no individuals were exactly the same. To the hidden man, he didn't look any special; but Brown designated him again, and declared: "This one has to die."

#

"Quit the glaring already!" growled the linguist.

Jack snarled something very crude back at him. Sam sighed and walked away from her two irate colleagues. They'd been at each other's throat almost from the beginning of this mission, all because of one of the colonel's bad puns in the briefing room. Daniel had overreacted. Sam understood how he felt about being dissed in front of General Hammond, but surely he knew the colonel wasn't ill-intentioned, didn't he?

Having nothing better to do, she sat on one of the stone benches aligned against the walls of the small square room. Light poured in from rectangular openings just below the ceiling, casting strong shadows on the floor. Sam had a direct look on a set of statues of short men and women, fully clothed. Bright dots of colours, often red, were still visible on some of the draped clothing, but most of the painting had faded into murky browns. The vast majority of the sculptures had been decapitated.

Sam rubbed her neck. Jack, who had finally left Daniel to his deciphering, was venting out his anger by pacing in front of the entrance doorway. Keeping watch on this side of the temple was supposed to be Teal'c's job. Sam noted, amused, how the big man had moved to the back wall as soon as the colonel had stepped in his zone. She'd probably have acted the same way, she thought.

She didn't think anybody would come through the front opening anyway, and felt much better knowing she was not alone in keeping an eye on the ornate door Daniel was trying to unlock. Embellished with etchings of vines and volutes, it blurred with the adjoining façade. They had only detected it because the room looked too small compared to the outside structure.

Daniel had regained his composure. Sam smiled at the way he muttered to himself, scribbling in his notebook without looking away from the wall. She was glad not to be the subject of his scrutiny: it was so intense that the carved hieroglyphs were writhing in pain. Daniel took a couple of steps backwards. Mouth wide open, he embraced the whole gate in his gaze. He was playing with his pen, agitating it between his fingers. His whole attitude screamed that he was about to have one of this intuitive leaps Sam liked so much.

"Come and look at this," he said.

Teal'c and Sam exchanged a look. Slowly she stood up, and walked the few paces that kept her away from Daniel.

Before she could reach him, a white light flooded the room. Sam heard a buzz, and fainted.

#

"You see! I told you he was dangerous." Brown crossed her arms on her stomach. The look of contempt on her face angered Grey. It angered him even more to admit that she'd been right. He would have bet that the blond woman was more dangerous than this man. He had detected hints of a previous blending with a Goau'ld in her brain. She was bright, too.

"We need to do a thorough analysis of his thought patterns," she added.

Dissection, electrical stimulation, chemical analysis: he was familiar with the process. "Too smart for his own good, this boy," muttered Grey.

"I'm not happy about that either!"

"Drop this tell-tale smirk from your face, and I might even believe you." To be honest, he didn't care much about the fate of the young stranger either. That scared him. When had he lost his soul? Why hadn't he noticed? He glared at the old woman. Nobody who observed them now would believe that they had chosen each other to live this interminable life together. And yet, he remembered he had enjoyed her company, when they talked about love, hope, and patience until the small hours. She wouldn't have sentenced this man to death so heartily back then.

Brown placed a shaky hand on the unconscious man's forehead. She brushed a strand of hair from his face. "Fine. If you show me another way, we'll spare him."

Brown acquiesced. He had to find an idea, and a damn good one at that. His own soul was at stake.

#

Jack slit his eyes opened for the second time. The white butterflies didn't disappear. What the hell had caused him this hangover? Oh yeah. Daniel. Maybe trying to drink him under the table after a heated arguing session had been a bad plan. They'd both lost, and it hadn't been pretty. One week later, they were still mending their wounds. even now they were off world. Ah. Then it was not a hangover. It probably was worse than that.

Jack heard a moan; a sad sound that, he understood as he sat, had come from him. Holding his head between his hands, he waited for the pain to recede. Eventually, the pounding slowed down, allowing Jack to take a careful look at his surroundings.

Oh yeah, he remembered now. The temple of the beheaded statues. He kind of envied their fate: these guys were headache-safe, at least. Jack quickly assessed his body for injuries. As far as he could tell, apart from his dire need for a Tylenol, he didn't have a scratch.

He couldn't see the others from here. He remembered Daniel and Teal'c standing near the back wall, and Sam sitting on a bench. Now it was too dark to see the whole room.

Too dark? Jack grumbled and turned his flashlight on. How long had he been unconscious? The last rays of sun entering via the little windows indicated it was evening already. Leaning on the wall, he stood up and turned around to the doorway, only to notice that it had disappeared and been replaced by a solid wall.

"Great." Well, he'd worry about that later. "All right, roll call, kids. Carter?"

A cough came from the central alley. "I'm alive, Sir. I think."

"I am well, O'Neill."

Jack found Sam and helped her up. The beam of the flashlight didn't reveal much of the dusty room, unfortunately, and he couldn't see Teal'c or Daniel yet. "OK, big guy, I heard you. Where are you?"

"I am standing near a pillar, south of your position."

"Daniel?" Jack waited. "Hey, sleepy-head!"

"O'Neill. I have found something." Jack approached, and swallowed a scream of anger: Teal'c's flashlight revealed a dark shape bundled on the floor. Daniel's clothes, including his shoes, socks and glasses, laid discarded on the ground. Their owner was nowhere to be found.

"Daniel!" he called again.

"Oh my God, Sir! His clothes."

"Thank you, I can see that, Major! Now where is he? Playing nudist with an alien girl or what? Daniel! Come here right now, it's an order!" Jack was not stupid. Out of all the ways that could explain Daniel's disappearance, him playing native with the locals was low on the list of possibilities. He didn't want to consider the most obvious alternative, though. Not right now. Which is why he could have done without Sam's intervention.

"Colonel, I remember a column of light falling on us. It may have disintegrated Daniel."

"Thank you, Major, you're extremely helpful!" Jack banged the wall. Teal'c was about to talk, too, and he would just hit the nail on the head a bit harder, of course. Exactly what Jack needed. Not.

"I believe that Major Carter is wrong, O'Neill."

"What?" Jack knelt next to Teal'c, who was shaking Daniel's jacket like it could drop a linguist. "What are you saying?"

"I am saying that Major Carter is wrong, O'Neill," he repeated.

"She's wrong because.?"

"Daniel Jackson's tee shirt is missing. He has gotten rid of the rest of his clothes to move more easily. He is hiding from us. I am now going to find him."

"And how, Sherlock?"

"Who is Sherlock?"

"An English detective who. Never mind. Just call me Watson."

"As you wish, Watson." Teal'c directed the beam of light to an area of the ground where Jack and Daniel hadn't unsettled the dust with their constant pacing. A set of bare footprints, starting from the bundle of clothes, led to the eastern wall. Bare, and very, very short.

"It can't be him, Sir," murmured Sam.

#

The boy made himself even smaller under the stone bench. He had a clear view of a black pair of boots, immobile in the last pool of orange light falling from the ceiling. He had counted three adults. Two, the woman and the black man, he had seen when he'd woken up. The third one he only knew by his voice.

Shivering from the cold, the boy pulled the dark fabric closer to his skin. When he had awakened, he'd been half buried under oversized, heavy clothes that didn't belong to him. Army clothes, he guessed. He'd shaken them off, trousers, shoes and all, keeping only the tee shirt. Then he had spotted two of the three scary soldiers, and had searched for a hiding place.

If he managed not to sneeze until they were gone, he would be safe -- as much as he could be safe in a nightmare. He must have fallen asleep in the museum, but he would wake up any time now. Mom and Dad would hug him and take him to another place. Maybe they would have another of these funny round sandwiches. And there would be no stone slab crushing them, because that hadn't truly happened.

The owner of the boots slowly lowered to the ground. It was the black man, the one with the weird golden thing on his forehead. It was too dark for Daniel to quite make out what the engraved sign was. Right now, he had other things on his mind anyway.

"I have found him, Watson," said the man. The boy liked his voice: deep, and calm. Still, he trembled from fear.

A second person lay down in front of him. It was the woman. She was blond like Mom. "Hey, hello there!" Her smile looked nice. Not enough to convince him to move out of his shelter, though.

"Daniel, come here and quick!" said the man he had yet to see.

Daniel shook his head and crawled back against the wall.

"I don't know if it's Daniel. It's just a kid, Colonel. I think he is afraid."

"Afraid? Of us?" He paused. "A kid?"

The boy rolled his eyes. He was Daniel, yes; and he was a child, of course. Nothing new, here. These people were definitely weird, and it would be nice if this bad dream stopped right now. The woman smiled again, a bit sheepishly, and stood up. "Colonel, maybe you should."

The black man left, too, and in his place appeared the Colonel. Daniel could see him well, thanks to the flashlight the woman was directing on them from the side. The Colonel looked old. Surely he was much older than Dad. His hair was dark, as were his eyes. He had a rough appearance not unlike that of the bandits who robbed the pyramids.

They glared at each other until the old man spoke. "It's him. Maybe." He didn't sound too happy about this, which confirmed what Daniel had deduced from the way he had called after him before: the Colonel Watson was angry. The boy couldn't remember what he had done wrong. In his dream, he had run out of the exhibition room when the stone. when the stone. Maybe the old man was a guardian of the museum.

The dust tickling his nostrils felt more and more real. Daniel sneezed. He tensed, fearing the Colonel's reaction. At his surprise, Watson chuckled. "Yes, it's him," he confirmed. "OK, Daniel, time to get out of your little corner, don't you think?"

#

Jack frowned as the shivering kid shook his head once again. He had tried to talk him out of his hiding place for nearly ten minutes, and most of the time he hadn't even get a reaction from him. His parents must have been pushing this "Don't talk to strangers!" recommendation just a bit too far.

"We have a problem, guys." He slid his flashlight under the bench, causing the boy to shrink back even more than before, and left it there, the beam directed towards the centre of the room. Then he stood and gathered the rest of his team next to a statue that was only missing its nose. Following his example, Sam and Teal'c sat down on the ground.

"Opinions, anybody?" he asked.

"He is in shock," stated Sam. "We need to warm him up, too. It's getting chilly in here."

"We will have to employ force if Daniel Jackson refuses to come to us."

Jack glared at Teal'c. "No way, big guy. I'm not gonna freak out this kid any more than he already is."

Teal'c simply raised an eyebrow, inviting him to find a better solution.

"Carter, give him an emergency blanket. Just put it in his reach. That should take care of the cold." Jack waited until his 2IC had pushed the shiny Mylar sheet under the bench, and had explained softly what it was. Once she was back, he pointed at the huddled form of the boy. "Do either of you have an idea of what caused that?"

"I don't know, Sir. He called us. I think he had deciphered the writing, or at least that he was on the right track. Then there was this light and." She waved in the air.

"Did he touch anything?"

"Daniel Jackson was standing at a distance from the wall. He was not in measure of touching it."

"At least they didn't kill him this time," sighed Jack. "How long were we out cold, by the way?"

"Seven hours."

Jack jumped back to his feet, and walked to the bundle of clothes. Having shoved everything in Daniel's backpack, except for the notebook and the glasses that he dumped in one of his jacket pockets, he proceeded to examine the scribbles on the wall. This taught him nothing new.

He tapped against the wall. "Hard stuff," he grunted. "I'd say we blast it open, but we don't have the material." He strode back to the front of the temple, whose doorway had gone AWOL, and was forced to come to the conclusion that they were well and truly stuck.

Staring at the ceiling, he yelled: "What do you want in the end? Let me talk with your leader!"

"O'Neill, I do not think they wish to talk with us."

Teal'c's answer was the only one he would get. Jack came back to sit with his teammates. He looked at the kid, who had wrapped himself in the blanket, but hadn't otherwise moved. He couldn't be more than eight years old, and at seeing him so defenceless, Jack knew he wouldn't use any physical mean to get Daniel out from under the bench.

He'd just have to go all psychological on him. "Carter, I'm starving. Dinner time."

#

He hated this smell. The velvety scent of tomato soup mixed with a fresh hint of cumin was completely spoilt by the stale odour of long-forgotten dust. Daniel had a vivid imagination, but this was way beyond his abilities. It was not a dream, no matter how hard he wanted it to be.

Daniel's stomach growled. The woman noticed, and poured some soup in a cup. She was about to bring it to him, like she had done with the golden, crispy sheet, when the colonel ordered her to stay where she was. Daniel understood that, if he wanted to eat, he'd have to join the adults.

Slowly, he got himself out of the cramped space. His muscles ached in protest. Unable to stand up, he dropped the blanket to crawl to the little camp the woman had set up. The three people were sitting inside a circle delimited by the four backpacks and revolving around a gas cooker and aluminium pots. Daniel's parents used the same type of cooking utensils whenever they explored new ruins, before they could set up the real camp with big tents and daub ovens.

"Atta boy," said the colonel when Daniel took place among them. The black man had already gone to get the blanket back. He put it around the child's shoulders, and sat cross-legged at his side. His hands were resting on his knees. They looked strong enough to snap a neck in two without breaking a sweat, but somehow, Daniel wasn't afraid of them.

The child reached out for the steaming mug. The black man nodded at him, and the woman smiled. For a while, Daniel focused only on the warmth of the cup between his hands. When he felt ready, he sipped the red liquid, careful as not to burn his tongue. The others were staring like they had never seen someone drinking soup before.

He finished in silence, peering at the colonel as he put some more water to boil. "Coffee," explained the man. "OK, now that you look a bit better, what's your name?"

The sounds hardly came out. "Daniel."

"Daniel what?"

From the adults' previous comments, the boy was persuaded that they knew him. Why did the colonel insist on him telling his name, then? He shrugged. He was not in a position to ask questions. "Jackson."

"You don't remember us, do you?"

"No." He had a weird lump in his throat.

"Do you know how you came here?"

Daniel put the empty cup on the ground. He only remembered running out of the exhibition room, fleeing from the hands that tried to stop him. He must have fainted, then, and someone had carried him here. From all the statues around, he could see he was still somewhere in the museum, probably in a storage room of sort.

"Where do you think you are?" asked the woman.

"A museum in New York." He couldn't hold back a tear.

"Holy Hannah! Colonel, that's where. you know."

"I know."

What did they know? Daniel caught the exchange of meaningful glances between the colonel and the woman. She looked distraught, but the man's expression had hardened. Where they thinking of his parents? Was it true, then? Daniel closed his eyes.

It couldn't be. That part was a nightmare. It had to be.

"O'Neill, I believe we should tell him what happened to him."

"Yeah. Okay, kiddo. Look at me, will you?"

The colonel wiped a tear of Daniel's face. The boy twitched; he didn't like being touched by a stranger. Now that he had spent some time with them, they didn't seem to be of bad company, but still, he didn't feel completely at ease with them. They had weapons, for a start.

The black man poured the other two some coffee. He didn't take any. A large piece of chocolate suddenly appeared in his huge hand, and he offered it to the boy. While drinking, the colonel -- whose name was Jack O'Neill, and not Neil Watson like Daniel had first thought -- told the child an odd tale involving aliens and space travel. That sure beat Egyptian mythology.

"So, what you're saying is, in fact I'm a grown-up?"

#

To which an older Daniel would have added: "Are you out of your mind?" Jack could have sworn the thought had crossed the child, too. He couldn't blame him. "We've seen crazier things, believe me."

Daniel inclined his head, raised his eyebrows and brought his lips into as small a dot as he could achieve, in an expression so similar to his usual self that it lifted any remaining doubt about his identity.

Clearly, he needed an explanation. "Look, I'm quite the old geezer, you agree with me?"

The kid widened his eyes. "Geezer?"

"The colonel means he is very old."

"Oh!" Daniel shrugged, and nodded.

Well, if Jack had expected a refutation, he'd been wrong. "Right. Carter, you're on latrine duties for the next ten years, by the way."

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir." She winked at Daniel, and was rewarded by a shy smile. Even though it didn't quite reach his eyes, it was a very welcome improvement.

"Now that we have stated that I'm old. I've caught some nasty bugs on one of my trips. Electronic bugs, as it is. They wear a funky name: nanocytes. Sounds nice, doesn't it?"

Having made sure that he had caught the kid's attention, Jack went on: "They made me age really quickly. One year every day."

"Is that why you're old?"

"No! I'm just. um. normally old. You know, I wake up in the morning, then a certain teammate of mine goes missing or worse, and suddenly I find a new wrinkle in the mirror. Normal stuff, you see."

Daniel didn't comment. He played with his empty mug, effectively turning it into a clumsy spinning top. Jack let him ponder on the situation. It was pretty obvious that the boy didn't remember anything from his adult life. But, eight years old or not, he still basically thought the same way as he would do later. Jack knew that, open-minded or not, he wasn't one to believe something big like that just at face value.

"Daniel, it is very important for us to know if you remember anything from after you were hit by the light," said Carter softly.

The related article - The finished fanfic