Fic Post: "Five times that Jack never learned."
Title: "Five times that Jack never learned"
Author: Rigel
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Disclaimer: Not mine (alas!) Don't sue!
Warnings:None
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1735
Categories: Angst, Gen, Jack O'Neill, Jack and Teal'c Friendship, Jack and Sam Friendship, Jack/Sara
A/N: For crazedturkey on the occasion of her birthday. Here is my offering of fic for someone that I treasure as a true and wonderful friend!
**
“Ace of Spades?”
“Nope.” Jack flicked the card with his finger, sending it spinning toward the hat that was upturned between them. It missed and joined several others that were scattered on the carpet.
Teal’c furrowed his brow in concentration. “Three of diamonds.”
“Wrong again, buddy.” Another card flicked toward the hat.
“I believe even Samantha Carter would say the odds were against me here. Nine of Clubs.”
“Way off. It was a Four, I’ll give you that.”
“Perhaps I should extinguish the candles, O’Neill. Your aim is frequently amiss. Queen of Spades.”
“Hey! One in fifteen is pretty good. I’m still doing better than you here. And that’s two in fifteen, now.”
“That card is on the brim of the hat.”
“And?”
“The rules clearly state that the card must fall within the hat itself.”
“It’s touching it, isn’t it?”
Teal’c gave him a long look. “Two of Diamonds.”
“Sorry, it was the Five of Hearts. You know, we could so turn this into a routine if I didn’t shuffle the cards every time.” He flicked through the remainder of the deck. “Piece of cake.”
“But then there would be no element of chance. Ten of Diamonds.” He moved his palm to rest loosely on his knee.
“You and your Jaffa sense of honor. Right number, wrong suit. I’ll give you a freebie guess again.”
“Throw the card O’Neill.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Jack of Diamonds.”
“Correct! Teal’c is finally on the scoreboard.” He held up another card.
“It was only a matter of time, Samantha Carter has explained some Tau’ri theories of chance to me. Seven of Clubs.”
“And he’s right again. There’s no such thing as chance.”
“Indeed.”
A candle fizzled and popped as the wax settled against the wick.
“I think there’s time for one more round.” Jack gathered the scattered cards, snapping their backs as he reshuffled the deck. “Scores are tied.”
“For this cycle. I believe I am still the victor over the long term.”
“I think I’m improving, and don’t give me that look.”
“Even Bill Murray mastered this skill, O’Neill.”
"Bill Murray is a genius."
**
Paynan hands him the waterskin. It’s lukewarm from the heat of the day, but he swallows the water gratefully. He can still taste the acrid mix of dust and sweat that has ground itself into his skin and he passes the back of his hand over his face again, feeling the newly grown stubble that has emerged.
Tonight he will beg the loan of a knife and shave, but for now there is work to be done. The crops must be sown before the moon completes another half turn.
Four furrows have been plowed into the compacted dirt. His mind wants to call it earth, because it looks just like any other field he’s ever been in. But it’s not, and he’ll never walk there again.
He has a new world and a new life now.
“Now you try.” Paynan motions him over and places the leather strips into his hands. “Grip them loosely, but take care not to tangle them, or these beasts will take you a fair journey.”
He winds them around his palm, noting where they lie naturally across the creases. Soon he will have new calluses there, to lie over the ones made from weapons recoil.
“Give the command now.”
He calls the word Paynan has taught him, and the oxen shuffle forward against their yoke. The plow skitters out from the furrow after a few paces, despite his best efforts to use his weight against it.
Irritated, he calls a halt. The perfect lines in the ground are now marred by an obvious mistake.
“It is not bad for a first try. You were not born to this life, O’Neill.”
He buries his frown beneath determination. At least the man wasn’t being sarcastic, or even worse, patronizing.
“This time, you must direct the oxen as well. Pull left with your hands.”
When Naytha brings the noonday meal; he has added six more crooked lines to the field, his back aches from the constant hunched pose and he has four blisters that Laira will need to lance with a needle by the light of the hearth that night.
“Garan asks if you will need help to finish?” she asks. Her manner is still shy, and she smoothes her hands against her apron as she waits for an answer.
He grins, his teeth a startling white against the deepening tan of his skin. “Paynan here assures me that we’re right on schedule.”
Paynan claps him on the back and he winces, the sunburn is beginning to smart. “We’ll make a farmer out of you yet, stranger.”
**
He can smell blood, salty and edged with the faint scent of copper. His tunic is soaked with it, as it seeps out slowly from where the honed blade has pierced his skin, burying itself deep in his chest.
His teeth are clenched together, and his breathing hisses between them as he forces deep and even mouthfuls of air into his lungs. It hurts, but he keeps the slow rhythm going.
He closes his eyes briefly, only to open them in time to see a flash of richly brocaded fabric pass by. There is the scent of apples, and a cloying undertone that reminds him of cinnamon.
This death will be slow.
He’ll drown, choking on his own blood as Ba’al’s laughter echoes in his ears.
And then they’ll do it all over again.
**
Sara has kept Charlie’s room exactly as it was. His stuffed animals are still perched on the high shelf looking down over the newer action figures; the artwork he brought home from school is still pinned to the cork notice board.
Even the sheets on his bed are still unlaundered. If he presses his face into his pillow he can still smell the shampoo he washed his hair with.
And most painful of all, his leather baseball glove is set on top of his desk, amid scattered markers and pencils. The ball is nestled gently within its empty grasp.
He usually waits until she leaves the house, and then creeps slowly up the stairs, careful not to jar the third step from the landing because that was how Charlie had always known he was coming when they played hide and seek. Sometimes he just stands outside the door and runs his fingers across the nameplate for a while, but he always ends up in front of the glove.
He knows every last inch of its surface. The pulled stitch that loops slightly on the back of the index finger; the scuffed and worn patina of the leather from the hours of practice they shared together, and the smudged but still legible ‘O’Neill’ printed on the tag in Sara’s neat hand.
She cries at night. Silent tears, but he can hear the hitch in her breathing and he can feel her grief because it’s a reflection of his own. She flinches away from his touch and he lies tense by her side until she succumbs to exhaustion. He strokes her hair softly as she sleeps and she relaxes back into their comfortable spooned position.
When she tries to talk to him; he pulls away, makes excuses or refuses to engage directly. He wants to let it all spill out, but he’s afraid it will poison her with its bile and bitterness.
She says she needs him to tell her what he’s feeling, but he can’t describe it, it’s still too abstracted, too removed from his thoughts. He only sees accusation in her eyes and can’t blame her for what he already knows.
**
“Have you tried turning it off and then switching it back on?”
“I’m not a complete idiot.” He cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear as he reached around the back of the computer to jiggle the cords again in one last futile attempt to make it spring back to life again.
“Seriously, sir, why don’t you just call IT?” Sam sounded slightly exasperated, but he could just have been projecting his own feelings into his interpretation of her tone.
“Because it will take half an hour to send someone down and I need that file now, in fact I needed it yesterday during the actual meeting, but that’s beside the point.” A cable sprung loose in his hand and he peered at it - it didn’t look too vital. He shoved it back in the general direction that it had come from.
“So walk me through what happened.”
“I opened the file.”
“And?”
“I was getting to that. It just froze on me.” He tapped the tower again, this time a little more forcefully. “Carter, are you eating?”
“You’re on speakerphone, sir. And I’m running a diagnostic on the power source of that artifact from PX5-119; it’s a little noisy in here at the moment.”
“Right.”
“So, it crashed?”
“I thought I’d already established that.”
“Did you try Control-Alt-Delete?”
“Yes.” He pressed the key combination hurriedly.
“I can hear you typing, sir.”
“Well, it didn’t work.”
“What’s onscreen right now?”
“Carter, the screen is black.”
“Well, you didn’t say that.”
“I’m saying it now.” Maybe if he kicked it, it couldn’t make it worse, surely?
“Is everything plugged in?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He heard a definite laugh in her tone this time. “This is why we should never trust machines for the storage of important information.”
“Plug back in whatever you’ve managed to pull out.”
“Have you seen what the back of a computer looks like these days? There’s half a million cables there.”
“You’ve most likely pulled out the one that connects to the monitor. The big fat green one.”
“Got it.”
“Put it back in, there’s only one that it will fit into.”
He shoved the cable back into place and the screen flickered back to life. “We have it now. The task manager is open.”
“So tell me what’s running. Read off all the entries that don’t have System listed next to them.”
“LVcomSer.exe”
“Nope.”
“ccApp.exe”
“That’s not it.”
“worldofwarcraft.exe”
“Wait a minute, what?”
“worldofwarcraft.exe”
“You’re playing World of Warcraft at the SGC?”
“Maybe.”
“And what did I tell you the last time it crashed your system?”
“That next time I should choose the Paladin class and work more on my melee skills?”
“You never learn, do you, sir?”
Author: Rigel
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Disclaimer: Not mine (alas!) Don't sue!
Warnings:None
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1735
Categories: Angst, Gen, Jack O'Neill, Jack and Teal'c Friendship, Jack and Sam Friendship, Jack/Sara
A/N: For crazedturkey on the occasion of her birthday. Here is my offering of fic for someone that I treasure as a true and wonderful friend!
**
“Ace of Spades?”
“Nope.” Jack flicked the card with his finger, sending it spinning toward the hat that was upturned between them. It missed and joined several others that were scattered on the carpet.
Teal’c furrowed his brow in concentration. “Three of diamonds.”
“Wrong again, buddy.” Another card flicked toward the hat.
“I believe even Samantha Carter would say the odds were against me here. Nine of Clubs.”
“Way off. It was a Four, I’ll give you that.”
“Perhaps I should extinguish the candles, O’Neill. Your aim is frequently amiss. Queen of Spades.”
“Hey! One in fifteen is pretty good. I’m still doing better than you here. And that’s two in fifteen, now.”
“That card is on the brim of the hat.”
“And?”
“The rules clearly state that the card must fall within the hat itself.”
“It’s touching it, isn’t it?”
Teal’c gave him a long look. “Two of Diamonds.”
“Sorry, it was the Five of Hearts. You know, we could so turn this into a routine if I didn’t shuffle the cards every time.” He flicked through the remainder of the deck. “Piece of cake.”
“But then there would be no element of chance. Ten of Diamonds.” He moved his palm to rest loosely on his knee.
“You and your Jaffa sense of honor. Right number, wrong suit. I’ll give you a freebie guess again.”
“Throw the card O’Neill.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Jack of Diamonds.”
“Correct! Teal’c is finally on the scoreboard.” He held up another card.
“It was only a matter of time, Samantha Carter has explained some Tau’ri theories of chance to me. Seven of Clubs.”
“And he’s right again. There’s no such thing as chance.”
“Indeed.”
A candle fizzled and popped as the wax settled against the wick.
“I think there’s time for one more round.” Jack gathered the scattered cards, snapping their backs as he reshuffled the deck. “Scores are tied.”
“For this cycle. I believe I am still the victor over the long term.”
“I think I’m improving, and don’t give me that look.”
“Even Bill Murray mastered this skill, O’Neill.”
"Bill Murray is a genius."
**
Paynan hands him the waterskin. It’s lukewarm from the heat of the day, but he swallows the water gratefully. He can still taste the acrid mix of dust and sweat that has ground itself into his skin and he passes the back of his hand over his face again, feeling the newly grown stubble that has emerged.
Tonight he will beg the loan of a knife and shave, but for now there is work to be done. The crops must be sown before the moon completes another half turn.
Four furrows have been plowed into the compacted dirt. His mind wants to call it earth, because it looks just like any other field he’s ever been in. But it’s not, and he’ll never walk there again.
He has a new world and a new life now.
“Now you try.” Paynan motions him over and places the leather strips into his hands. “Grip them loosely, but take care not to tangle them, or these beasts will take you a fair journey.”
He winds them around his palm, noting where they lie naturally across the creases. Soon he will have new calluses there, to lie over the ones made from weapons recoil.
“Give the command now.”
He calls the word Paynan has taught him, and the oxen shuffle forward against their yoke. The plow skitters out from the furrow after a few paces, despite his best efforts to use his weight against it.
Irritated, he calls a halt. The perfect lines in the ground are now marred by an obvious mistake.
“It is not bad for a first try. You were not born to this life, O’Neill.”
He buries his frown beneath determination. At least the man wasn’t being sarcastic, or even worse, patronizing.
“This time, you must direct the oxen as well. Pull left with your hands.”
When Naytha brings the noonday meal; he has added six more crooked lines to the field, his back aches from the constant hunched pose and he has four blisters that Laira will need to lance with a needle by the light of the hearth that night.
“Garan asks if you will need help to finish?” she asks. Her manner is still shy, and she smoothes her hands against her apron as she waits for an answer.
He grins, his teeth a startling white against the deepening tan of his skin. “Paynan here assures me that we’re right on schedule.”
Paynan claps him on the back and he winces, the sunburn is beginning to smart. “We’ll make a farmer out of you yet, stranger.”
**
He can smell blood, salty and edged with the faint scent of copper. His tunic is soaked with it, as it seeps out slowly from where the honed blade has pierced his skin, burying itself deep in his chest.
His teeth are clenched together, and his breathing hisses between them as he forces deep and even mouthfuls of air into his lungs. It hurts, but he keeps the slow rhythm going.
He closes his eyes briefly, only to open them in time to see a flash of richly brocaded fabric pass by. There is the scent of apples, and a cloying undertone that reminds him of cinnamon.
This death will be slow.
He’ll drown, choking on his own blood as Ba’al’s laughter echoes in his ears.
And then they’ll do it all over again.
**
Sara has kept Charlie’s room exactly as it was. His stuffed animals are still perched on the high shelf looking down over the newer action figures; the artwork he brought home from school is still pinned to the cork notice board.
Even the sheets on his bed are still unlaundered. If he presses his face into his pillow he can still smell the shampoo he washed his hair with.
And most painful of all, his leather baseball glove is set on top of his desk, amid scattered markers and pencils. The ball is nestled gently within its empty grasp.
He usually waits until she leaves the house, and then creeps slowly up the stairs, careful not to jar the third step from the landing because that was how Charlie had always known he was coming when they played hide and seek. Sometimes he just stands outside the door and runs his fingers across the nameplate for a while, but he always ends up in front of the glove.
He knows every last inch of its surface. The pulled stitch that loops slightly on the back of the index finger; the scuffed and worn patina of the leather from the hours of practice they shared together, and the smudged but still legible ‘O’Neill’ printed on the tag in Sara’s neat hand.
She cries at night. Silent tears, but he can hear the hitch in her breathing and he can feel her grief because it’s a reflection of his own. She flinches away from his touch and he lies tense by her side until she succumbs to exhaustion. He strokes her hair softly as she sleeps and she relaxes back into their comfortable spooned position.
When she tries to talk to him; he pulls away, makes excuses or refuses to engage directly. He wants to let it all spill out, but he’s afraid it will poison her with its bile and bitterness.
She says she needs him to tell her what he’s feeling, but he can’t describe it, it’s still too abstracted, too removed from his thoughts. He only sees accusation in her eyes and can’t blame her for what he already knows.
**
“Have you tried turning it off and then switching it back on?”
“I’m not a complete idiot.” He cradled the phone between his shoulder and ear as he reached around the back of the computer to jiggle the cords again in one last futile attempt to make it spring back to life again.
“Seriously, sir, why don’t you just call IT?” Sam sounded slightly exasperated, but he could just have been projecting his own feelings into his interpretation of her tone.
“Because it will take half an hour to send someone down and I need that file now, in fact I needed it yesterday during the actual meeting, but that’s beside the point.” A cable sprung loose in his hand and he peered at it - it didn’t look too vital. He shoved it back in the general direction that it had come from.
“So walk me through what happened.”
“I opened the file.”
“And?”
“I was getting to that. It just froze on me.” He tapped the tower again, this time a little more forcefully. “Carter, are you eating?”
“You’re on speakerphone, sir. And I’m running a diagnostic on the power source of that artifact from PX5-119; it’s a little noisy in here at the moment.”
“Right.”
“So, it crashed?”
“I thought I’d already established that.”
“Did you try Control-Alt-Delete?”
“Yes.” He pressed the key combination hurriedly.
“I can hear you typing, sir.”
“Well, it didn’t work.”
“What’s onscreen right now?”
“Carter, the screen is black.”
“Well, you didn’t say that.”
“I’m saying it now.” Maybe if he kicked it, it couldn’t make it worse, surely?
“Is everything plugged in?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He heard a definite laugh in her tone this time. “This is why we should never trust machines for the storage of important information.”
“Plug back in whatever you’ve managed to pull out.”
“Have you seen what the back of a computer looks like these days? There’s half a million cables there.”
“You’ve most likely pulled out the one that connects to the monitor. The big fat green one.”
“Got it.”
“Put it back in, there’s only one that it will fit into.”
He shoved the cable back into place and the screen flickered back to life. “We have it now. The task manager is open.”
“So tell me what’s running. Read off all the entries that don’t have System listed next to them.”
“LVcomSer.exe”
“Nope.”
“ccApp.exe”
“That’s not it.”
“worldofwarcraft.exe”
“Wait a minute, what?”
“worldofwarcraft.exe”
“You’re playing World of Warcraft at the SGC?”
“Maybe.”
“And what did I tell you the last time it crashed your system?”
“That next time I should choose the Paladin class and work more on my melee skills?”
“You never learn, do you, sir?”