Lions and Tigers and Igigi, Oh My
Yes, we are coming to an end (which explains the every day postings). It's time to get the onac set.
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1
Characters: Gibbs, Tony, Jack
Rating: TEEN (Gibbs/Tony)
Summary: Tony had never heard of goa'uld or tok'ra or igigi, and he sure as hell didn't know Gibbs had a passenger riding around in his head, but if Gibbs thinks one little alien parasite is going to make him go running, he has another thought coming. He's Gibbs' second, and that means he doesn't give up on his boss.
Ya know, just go read the old chapters on AO3 because coming up with links for every chapter is getting old.
Tony looked out at the calm waters. Ducky would call this place bucolic, and it was… except for the alien snakes in the water and the giant people-lizard things that apparently lived in caves and threatened to eat archeologists. Tony made a silent vow to never again ask Daniel a direct question. The answers were a little scary. “So, how do we do this, boss?” he asked.
Gibbs looked across the shallow pond. “Walk into the water, and the onac will come out.” He was still using the reverberation that everyone else associated with Samas.
“And when that doesn’t work?” O’Neill asked. He walked out ankle deep into the water and clutched his P90. Tony watched, but nothing happened. “What next?” O’Neill asked as if utterly unsurprised.
Gibbs frowned and walked toward O’Neill. Tony watched as the colonel’s body language screamed his unease, but he didn’t retreat as Gibbs reached out and wrapped fingers around his wrist.
“I’m not sure, but I think we had an in-service training about this kind of touching,” O’Neill commented.
Gibbs gave a small smile. “Your onac only had to know his choices. He will come out.”
“Ri-” O’Neill gagged and then the onac was flopping out of him. It hit the shallow mud and flipped itself into the air with a slap of its tail, and then O’Neill was firing his P90. Bullets shredded the onac’s body and pieces flew everywhere. Gibbs didn’t react, but Tony’s heart pounded painfully hard and Carter and Daniel both clutched their weapons.
“Jack? What the hell was that?” Daniel demanded.
“I’m not letting a snake run around with information out of my head,” O’Neill said.
Gibbs nodded. “The onac could either make a run for it or I threatened to kill him and rip him out of your head. He made his choice.” He looked down at a few chunks that floated on the surface of the muddy water. Tony was surprised that the other onac weren’t munching, but then he could feel something pressing against his skin, warning him away from the mess, and he was guessing that was Samas.
“You want our onac to teach the ones in there, don’t you?” O’Neill asked.
Gibbs gave a small nod. “One song is not enough to teach them how to sing.”
“But three or four would be?” Daniel asked. “I would support any reasonable attempt to recover your species, but do you really think this would be enough?”
“Yes,” Gibbs said. “Ra and Ra alone taught an entire generation of onac to desire power. I can remind them of what they used to be.”
Carter moved to the edge of the pond, and Tony watched as O’Neill shifted slightly, his weapon ready. He planned to do this again. “How do you know it was Ra alone?” Carter asked.
“My mother’s mother was alive at the time. She heard only distant fragments of his song, but a host came here-something not unas. It came to the sacred waters, and when Ra joined with this host, he learned to crave power and the submission of others. The host was warped in ways the onac were not prepared to handle. None of the queens knew of the danger when he started to sing, so none of them ate him and vomited his parts up on dry land.”
“So, one person can make a difference?” Daniel asked.
“No,” O’Neill snapped. “You are not doing this.”
Daniel got an expression that Tony was quickly learning to associate with Daniel pissing off the colonel. “I go into alien cultures all the time.”
“You, not snake-you. Not a chance, Daniel.” O’Neill had the weapon aimed in Daniel’s general direction, and Carter suddenly cried out. O’Neill swung back around to see her coughing and stumbling back away from the water.
“Crap.” O’Neill whirled around and focused on Daniel again.
“Sorry, sir. It got away,” Carter said.
“Teal’c, you couldn’t have shot it?” O’Neill asked wearily.
“You did not request that I do so,” Teal’c answered. O’Neill just sighed.
“You are not shooting my onac.” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest, and Tony wondered how he had fallen into the world’s oddest conversation.
“Watch me,” O’Neill said.
“You do not get to make the decision for me,” Daniel said, and before anyone could blink, he had done a belly flop right into the twelve inches of water at the edge of the pond.
“Daniel!” O’Neill hurried over and hauled Daniel up. From the coughing and smiling, Tony was guessing that Daniel had successfully helped his onac escape.
“That’s going to be a good story for the campfire,” Tony commented.
“Ya think?” Gibbs said, grinning as he watched Daniel pick his way out of the mud.
Tony walked to the edge of the pond. “If you shoot my onac, I will do very unpleasant things to your hair,” Tony warned the colonel.
O’Neill put the safety on his weapon and got an arm under Daniel’s elbow before the man could faceplant in the mud again. “DiNozzo, I don’t care what you do with your snake. You don’t have classified material in your head.”
“Hey! Yes I do,” Tony objected, “although it’s more about the wonderful world of NCIS paperwork.”
O’Neill grunted, although that might have been because of Daniel’s weight.
When Gibbs reached out and caught his arm, Tony could feel the flash of emotions between them. Gibbs and Samas were proud of him, protective and viciously afraid for him. There was a deep affection there that Tony hadn’t expected given the many ways he’d pissed Gibbs off in the past few days. Tony had no more than had that thought than he felt a wave of amusement, of approval for Tony’s ability to break the rules.
Then Tony got something more specific. He felt a ghost image-the slide of water over his long body, a narrow crevice, the presence of tiny onac, of small voices that whispered rather than sang. Their thoughts drifted out in tiny doses, almost lost in the current of the river. Tony could feel the danger. They were small, and there were so many that other onac would see them as prey. Some would die. That was accepted, but they couldn’t all be lost. They carried the memories.
He remembered Kali as she swam through the water, her fins hard razors as she fought. He remembered Yu’s twistiness, the way he would flip a tail and drive his teeth into his opponent while his opponent still tried to chase that elusive tail. He remembered the waters loud with a dozen songs, queens sliding through them seeking the best. And when queens met, the water would turn red with their blood. These tiny onac hiding in the gaps of the rocks sang of all that.
Samas should stay to protect them, but to do so would be to leave Gibbs dangerously short of resources. Samas couldn’t protect both the children and his host. Tony grabbed Gibbs’ arm and imagined himself in the body of an onac, his own fins erect and his teeth sharp as he snapped at any onac that came near his brood. They were Samas’ children, and Tony always took care of the boss’s stuff.
Samas smiled at him. “I will join you in the water shortly,” Samas said. Tony could feel the violence in that promise. Samas would chase him, try to sink teeth into him. Tony had to tempt the queen into taking his blood and his DNA without giving up so much that the queen found him weak or that she killed him. He couldn’t protect the children if he was dead. It was a new challenge, and Tony felt a hot flash of adrenaline and then he felt a need to retch. He bent over to vomit, but the onac slipped out instead.
The second it was clear of Tony, its fins opened and it vanished into the water with a flick of its tail. For one strange second, Tony felt like he should be in the water, searching for that cache of rock where he would find his small charges. But that wasn’t his quest.
Samas tightened his fingers around Tony’s arm. “Keep the idiot from throwing himself on his own sword,” Samas requested.
“Always,” Tony agreed. And then Samas did a far quicker and neater exit from Gibbs. He dove into the water nose first, and appeared again, snapping up several pieces of O’Neill’s symbiote from the water. Tony suspected that Samas wouldn’t be vomiting that one back up, but what O’Neill didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Gibbs dropped his hand and trudged slowly out of the water, squinting. “I hate how he can never fix my eyesight well enough to make it stay fixed when he leaves.”
Tony started laughing. “Christ almighty, Kate, you missed that one.”
“DiNozzo?” Gibbs demanded.
Tony laughed some more as he climbed up to dry land. “Your eyesight, boss. One day you were a sharpshooter who made us both feel inadequate to breathe the same air, and the next you were squinting at a license plate on the screen asking if the last letter was a B or an R when it was really a five. Kate finally decided you had a deep subconscious hatred for desk work and your problems with your eyesight were all a psychological symptom.”
“Huh. Not really,” Gibbs said.
Tony sat down on the grass and looked up at an alien sky. He wondered if Kate was watching, and if so, whether she’d just fallen off her heavenly chair laughing. “Yeah, I think we missed the boat on a lot of things, Gibbs.”
“Probably. But right now, I think we need to talk about the future,” Gibbs said. Tony thought Gibbs was talking to him, but when he looked over, Gibbs had his attention locked onto O’Neill.
“Yeah, we probably should, Gunny,” O’Neill agreed.
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1
Characters: Gibbs, Tony, Jack
Rating: TEEN (Gibbs/Tony)
Summary: Tony had never heard of goa'uld or tok'ra or igigi, and he sure as hell didn't know Gibbs had a passenger riding around in his head, but if Gibbs thinks one little alien parasite is going to make him go running, he has another thought coming. He's Gibbs' second, and that means he doesn't give up on his boss.
Ya know, just go read the old chapters on AO3 because coming up with links for every chapter is getting old.
Tony looked out at the calm waters. Ducky would call this place bucolic, and it was… except for the alien snakes in the water and the giant people-lizard things that apparently lived in caves and threatened to eat archeologists. Tony made a silent vow to never again ask Daniel a direct question. The answers were a little scary. “So, how do we do this, boss?” he asked.
Gibbs looked across the shallow pond. “Walk into the water, and the onac will come out.” He was still using the reverberation that everyone else associated with Samas.
“And when that doesn’t work?” O’Neill asked. He walked out ankle deep into the water and clutched his P90. Tony watched, but nothing happened. “What next?” O’Neill asked as if utterly unsurprised.
Gibbs frowned and walked toward O’Neill. Tony watched as the colonel’s body language screamed his unease, but he didn’t retreat as Gibbs reached out and wrapped fingers around his wrist.
“I’m not sure, but I think we had an in-service training about this kind of touching,” O’Neill commented.
Gibbs gave a small smile. “Your onac only had to know his choices. He will come out.”
“Ri-” O’Neill gagged and then the onac was flopping out of him. It hit the shallow mud and flipped itself into the air with a slap of its tail, and then O’Neill was firing his P90. Bullets shredded the onac’s body and pieces flew everywhere. Gibbs didn’t react, but Tony’s heart pounded painfully hard and Carter and Daniel both clutched their weapons.
“Jack? What the hell was that?” Daniel demanded.
“I’m not letting a snake run around with information out of my head,” O’Neill said.
Gibbs nodded. “The onac could either make a run for it or I threatened to kill him and rip him out of your head. He made his choice.” He looked down at a few chunks that floated on the surface of the muddy water. Tony was surprised that the other onac weren’t munching, but then he could feel something pressing against his skin, warning him away from the mess, and he was guessing that was Samas.
“You want our onac to teach the ones in there, don’t you?” O’Neill asked.
Gibbs gave a small nod. “One song is not enough to teach them how to sing.”
“But three or four would be?” Daniel asked. “I would support any reasonable attempt to recover your species, but do you really think this would be enough?”
“Yes,” Gibbs said. “Ra and Ra alone taught an entire generation of onac to desire power. I can remind them of what they used to be.”
Carter moved to the edge of the pond, and Tony watched as O’Neill shifted slightly, his weapon ready. He planned to do this again. “How do you know it was Ra alone?” Carter asked.
“My mother’s mother was alive at the time. She heard only distant fragments of his song, but a host came here-something not unas. It came to the sacred waters, and when Ra joined with this host, he learned to crave power and the submission of others. The host was warped in ways the onac were not prepared to handle. None of the queens knew of the danger when he started to sing, so none of them ate him and vomited his parts up on dry land.”
“So, one person can make a difference?” Daniel asked.
“No,” O’Neill snapped. “You are not doing this.”
Daniel got an expression that Tony was quickly learning to associate with Daniel pissing off the colonel. “I go into alien cultures all the time.”
“You, not snake-you. Not a chance, Daniel.” O’Neill had the weapon aimed in Daniel’s general direction, and Carter suddenly cried out. O’Neill swung back around to see her coughing and stumbling back away from the water.
“Crap.” O’Neill whirled around and focused on Daniel again.
“Sorry, sir. It got away,” Carter said.
“Teal’c, you couldn’t have shot it?” O’Neill asked wearily.
“You did not request that I do so,” Teal’c answered. O’Neill just sighed.
“You are not shooting my onac.” Daniel crossed his arms over his chest, and Tony wondered how he had fallen into the world’s oddest conversation.
“Watch me,” O’Neill said.
“You do not get to make the decision for me,” Daniel said, and before anyone could blink, he had done a belly flop right into the twelve inches of water at the edge of the pond.
“Daniel!” O’Neill hurried over and hauled Daniel up. From the coughing and smiling, Tony was guessing that Daniel had successfully helped his onac escape.
“That’s going to be a good story for the campfire,” Tony commented.
“Ya think?” Gibbs said, grinning as he watched Daniel pick his way out of the mud.
Tony walked to the edge of the pond. “If you shoot my onac, I will do very unpleasant things to your hair,” Tony warned the colonel.
O’Neill put the safety on his weapon and got an arm under Daniel’s elbow before the man could faceplant in the mud again. “DiNozzo, I don’t care what you do with your snake. You don’t have classified material in your head.”
“Hey! Yes I do,” Tony objected, “although it’s more about the wonderful world of NCIS paperwork.”
O’Neill grunted, although that might have been because of Daniel’s weight.
When Gibbs reached out and caught his arm, Tony could feel the flash of emotions between them. Gibbs and Samas were proud of him, protective and viciously afraid for him. There was a deep affection there that Tony hadn’t expected given the many ways he’d pissed Gibbs off in the past few days. Tony had no more than had that thought than he felt a wave of amusement, of approval for Tony’s ability to break the rules.
Then Tony got something more specific. He felt a ghost image-the slide of water over his long body, a narrow crevice, the presence of tiny onac, of small voices that whispered rather than sang. Their thoughts drifted out in tiny doses, almost lost in the current of the river. Tony could feel the danger. They were small, and there were so many that other onac would see them as prey. Some would die. That was accepted, but they couldn’t all be lost. They carried the memories.
He remembered Kali as she swam through the water, her fins hard razors as she fought. He remembered Yu’s twistiness, the way he would flip a tail and drive his teeth into his opponent while his opponent still tried to chase that elusive tail. He remembered the waters loud with a dozen songs, queens sliding through them seeking the best. And when queens met, the water would turn red with their blood. These tiny onac hiding in the gaps of the rocks sang of all that.
Samas should stay to protect them, but to do so would be to leave Gibbs dangerously short of resources. Samas couldn’t protect both the children and his host. Tony grabbed Gibbs’ arm and imagined himself in the body of an onac, his own fins erect and his teeth sharp as he snapped at any onac that came near his brood. They were Samas’ children, and Tony always took care of the boss’s stuff.
Samas smiled at him. “I will join you in the water shortly,” Samas said. Tony could feel the violence in that promise. Samas would chase him, try to sink teeth into him. Tony had to tempt the queen into taking his blood and his DNA without giving up so much that the queen found him weak or that she killed him. He couldn’t protect the children if he was dead. It was a new challenge, and Tony felt a hot flash of adrenaline and then he felt a need to retch. He bent over to vomit, but the onac slipped out instead.
The second it was clear of Tony, its fins opened and it vanished into the water with a flick of its tail. For one strange second, Tony felt like he should be in the water, searching for that cache of rock where he would find his small charges. But that wasn’t his quest.
Samas tightened his fingers around Tony’s arm. “Keep the idiot from throwing himself on his own sword,” Samas requested.
“Always,” Tony agreed. And then Samas did a far quicker and neater exit from Gibbs. He dove into the water nose first, and appeared again, snapping up several pieces of O’Neill’s symbiote from the water. Tony suspected that Samas wouldn’t be vomiting that one back up, but what O’Neill didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Gibbs dropped his hand and trudged slowly out of the water, squinting. “I hate how he can never fix my eyesight well enough to make it stay fixed when he leaves.”
Tony started laughing. “Christ almighty, Kate, you missed that one.”
“DiNozzo?” Gibbs demanded.
Tony laughed some more as he climbed up to dry land. “Your eyesight, boss. One day you were a sharpshooter who made us both feel inadequate to breathe the same air, and the next you were squinting at a license plate on the screen asking if the last letter was a B or an R when it was really a five. Kate finally decided you had a deep subconscious hatred for desk work and your problems with your eyesight were all a psychological symptom.”
“Huh. Not really,” Gibbs said.
Tony sat down on the grass and looked up at an alien sky. He wondered if Kate was watching, and if so, whether she’d just fallen off her heavenly chair laughing. “Yeah, I think we missed the boat on a lot of things, Gibbs.”
“Probably. But right now, I think we need to talk about the future,” Gibbs said. Tony thought Gibbs was talking to him, but when he looked over, Gibbs had his attention locked onto O’Neill.
“Yeah, we probably should, Gunny,” O’Neill agreed.