Episode Alphabet Soup
My thanks to the 24 authors who wrote 28 fics to make Episode Alphabet Soup a reality: Alynt, Annieb, Busaikko, Dennydj, Eilidh, Fig Newton, Gategremlyn, Gillian, Ivorygates, Julie, Jb, JD Junkie, Magickmoons, Magistrate, Obsessivemuch, Paian, Princess of Geeks, Sid, Roeskva, Topazowl, Traycer, Thothmes, and Wonderland. An extra warm welcome to our first-time contributors:. alynt, annieb1955, busaikko, obsessivemuch1, and topazowl. Special thanks to the seasoned cooks who are always happy to offer another serving. And an extra, extra thank you to Alynt, Annieb, and Thothmes, who contributed two fics apiece.
Enjoy over 42,000 words of episode related fic! Story lengths range from 240 words to over 3,800. Ratings range from G to PG-13. Expect spoilers throughout the entire series, and references to canonical character deaths.
Story text is as written by the authors, but minor HTML coding has been changed and scene breaks have been altered to allow for more uniformity in page style.
Due to LJ posting constraints, most of the fics are excerpted, with links to the author's journal for the full story. The entire anthology is posted in full, without excerpts, over at Dreamwidth.
Readers are strongly encouraged to follow the links to the authors' individual journals and leave feedback.
Click on a specific episode to jump to that story, or just scroll down!
Stargate: the Movie
Season One: COTG / Fire and Water / TBFTGOG
Season Two: Need / 1969
Season Three: Legacy / Demons / FIAD / 100 Days / New Ground / Crystal Skull
Season Four: Upgrades / The First Ones / Beneath the Surface / The Light
Season Five: The Fifth Man / Rite of Passage / Wormhole Xtreme! / Meridian
Season Six: Nightwalkers
Season Seven: Fallen / Fragile Balance / Enemy Mine
Season Eight: Lockdown
Season Nine: Ripple Effect
Season Ten: The Quest / Unending
A is for Abandoned (Fire and Water)
by annieb1955
“To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone.”
Suzanne Gordon “Lonely In America” 1976.
Intellectually Daniel knew his team hadn't meant to leave him behind on Oannes. Instinctively though he'd felt abandoned. Still did. Especially when he’d come back to find his apartment and his office packed up, most of his belongings squared away in cardboard boxes with labels reading "Property of Dr. Daniel Jackson, deceased" slapped haphazardly on the sides. He was making some little headway on restoring his office back to normality when Sam poked her head around the corner of the door. "Need a hand?" she asked. "We're on stand down for the rest of the week so I thought I'd drop by and see what I could do to help."
"No," he said, knowing it sounded short and pissy and unable to really care even when Sam's face dropped. "Sorry, it's just that I know where everything used to be and it's easier if I do it myself."
"Sure," she said fake-brightly, "I understand."
Daniel was sure she didn't understand at all but he just nodded a goodbye at her as she left and went on with what he'd been doing.
He avoided talking to anyone at lunch by not going to the mess hall and instead nibbling on a powerbar he found in his top desk drawer when he was sorting papers. He’d drained his coffeepot by 3 o’clock and gave thought to making another but decided against it when he realized that going out to get more water from the fountain in the hallway increased the chances of him running into Sam again, or Teal’c, or God forbid, Jack. Somehow it was seeing Jack that bothered him the most though he couldn’t really put his finger on why and at this juncture wasn’t inclined to analyze it. Instead he put the coffee pot back and hurried out of his office, down the corridor to the elevator, which he rode up to the parking level then signed himself out at the security desk there and almost ran out to his car. By the time he got home the headache he’d had ever since he’d got back from Oannes, and that Dr. Fraiser said was a result of the memory device Nem had used on him, had soared to new heights and he let himself in his front door and closed it behind him with a sigh of relief.
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B is for Blame (The First Ones)
by annieb1955
"Where's Daniel?" Jack asked, looking around the mess hall as he pulled up a chair at the table across from Sam Carter and Teal'c.
"He asked for a day off," Carter said, around a mouthful of jello. "Said there was something he needed to do, and as his wrists are still pretty sore from being tied up and he's still suffering headaches from that bang on the head Chaka gave him, Janet told General Hammond he could probably use a day or so topside."
"Uh huh." Jack shoved his barely touched plate over to Teal'c. He had a feeling he knew where Daniel was going and what he was doing and he decided he might just need someone watching his six while he did it. "Enjoy, big guy," he said as Teal'c arched an inquiring eyebrow at him. "I'm not really hungry," he said. "I'll catch you guys tomorrow. I'm kinda tired. Think I'll knock off early myself."
Carter nodded and waved her spoon at him while Teal'c hoed into the food with enthusiasm. Jack headed for Hammond's office and apprised him of his plans then caught the elevator up to the parking level and signed out. In his truck, he looked at the slip of paper he'd gotten from Walter on his way out of Hammond's office then checked the route and headed off.
They'd only been back a day since rescuing Daniel from the Unas, Chaka. Daniel had been exhausted by the time they'd caught up with him, his wrists torn and bruised from the rope Chaka had bound him with as he'd dragged Daniel back to his home territory like some big hunting trophy he wanted to show off. Despite that, Jack had been impressed by Daniel's resourcefulness during his captivity, the way he'd left clues for anyone looking for him to follow, the fact that he'd kept his head and managed to befriend the young Unas and prevent himself from being killed. That they rescued Daniel was the only upside of that mission. The downside was losing the people they had.
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B is for Beholden (The Light)
by alynt
"Not a bad place for a three week vacation, huh?"
Daniel turned his head at the sound of Jack's voice then stood and tucked his notepad into his pocket. "Depends," he replied.
Jack quirked an eyebrow. "On what?"
Daniel shrugged. "On what your idea of the perfect vacation is."
"I'm guessing this isn't yours then."
"I'd rather be out in the desert on a dig. I was never one for bright lights, big city kind of stuff."
Jack gazed around the Light Room, almost but not quite looking at the machine that had caused so much trouble for them all. He tried not to think of the men who had died, the time to honor and mourn them would come later when they could return to Earth. He didn't want to think that it had almost killed Daniel either but it was difficult to keep his mind free of the images of Daniel on the balcony, about to jump, of him lying comatose in the infirmary and of the gut-wrenching moment when Daniel's heart had stopped just before Jack had carried him back to the planet.
"Mine either," he said finally. "I'm going for a walk on the beach. Wanna come?"
"I was going to take another look -"
"Come on." Jack grabbed Daniel's arm and pretty much dragged him out of the room. He was relieved when Daniel appeared to go with the flow and followed him without another word.
It was a perfect day for beachwalking. Jack picked up a piece of driftwood, hefting it in his hands before trailing one end in the sand as he walked.
"The light is safe now, you know," Daniel said.
"Yep, so Carter said, but you know me, never take a risk unless it's worth taking. No reason to be going in there any more than we have to, I figure." Jack waved a hand at the expanse of beach and water. "Way better things to look at than that."
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C is for Command Constants (New Ground)
by sg1jb
Tired and disquieted, George wished for nothing more than the luxury of closing his eyes and running his hands through his hair to massage his aching head. Unfortunately, the constants of command made that impossible at the moment. Despite that more often than not the need was the bane of his existence, he had to maintain an attentive, competent, and impartial demeanour. And anyway, even if command did not preclude such personal freedom of expression, there was still an obvious impediment to indulging in that sort of self-comfort. He really missed having hair.
After having spent countless, anxiety- fraught hours helpless to intervene in whatever was happening to his people - cages, for God's sake; they'd been confined in barred cages - he dearly wanted to hang on to the bloom of pleasure he'd felt when the clattering on the gate's ramp had ended and the head-count had come up complete. While that satisfaction had remained unbent during the quick, informal hallway chat with O'Neill and throughout most of this subsequent debrief, now the intensity of his relief was tempered by the realisation that something was being left unsaid.
No matter if somewhat dented, where all team members showed up on this side of the 'gate and stayed alive long enough to get back into the saddle for another ride was considered, in the SGC's books, a safe return. And a safe return plus formal clearance after all medical and debriefing reviews was normally enough to put most missions to bed - even ones that had gone sideways. Regardless of small cages, taser equivalents, and Teal'c's ordeal, given what he'd heard up until the last five minutes of this meeting George had expected this post-mission progression to follow suit.
Debriefings featured heavily in George's command routine; he had a lot of experience with them and was no slouch in reading between the lines. In the last few minutes of this one, he'd caught a hint of the small, carefully protected gap in the narrative, and that it was so covetously hidden gave him reason to suspect that one team member might not be moving on from this mission quite so readily as the others.
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D is for Demons (Demons)
Evensong
by PrincessofGeeks
When Daniel arrived at Teal'c's quarters, Sam was already there.
She was standing in the open door with her arms folded, waiting, in civilian dress, as Teal'c shrugged into a jacket.
"Um," Daniel said.
"Doctor Fraiser has cleared me, and Captain Carter has secured permission for me to leave Stargate Command for twenty-four hours," Teal'c said.
"Great," Daniel said. "I just. I was wanting to... where are you going?"
"Out," Sam said, more tersely than he was used to hearing from her. "Come with us."
"Um, okay. I have to change."
"Meet us at my place," Sam said, and she took Teal'c by the arm, hardly waiting for him to grab a watch cap before she was tugging him away, up the gray corridor toward the elevator.
Daniel was still standing there, bemused, looking at the closed door to Teal'c's quarters, when he heard cautious footsteps behind him. He turned to see Jack.
"They just left," Daniel said.
"What?" Jack said. There was a butterfly bandage on his eyebrow, Daniel noted. The blow he'd suffered back on the planet would probably leave a scar. What would Teal'c be left with?
"Come on," Daniel said, heading for the locker room. "I'll explain on the way."
At Sam's cottage, Daniel and Sam drank wine -- a cheap white that Sam apologized for, over Daniel's protestations that it was fine; he was the antithesis of a wine snob. All four of them looked a little stiff, a little formal, crammed into Sam's small living room. Daniel and Sam spent a couple of awkward moments talking about what bad wine one became inured to in grad school, but Teal'c interrupted them. He and Jack were drinking ice water.
"The only vehicle capable of transporting all of us comfortably will be your Volvo sedan, Captain Carter," Teal'c said. "And we will need to depart in approximately twenty of your minutes in order to arrive early."
"Early for what?" Jack said.
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E is for Enemy Mine (Enemy Mine)
by sg_wonderland
This had to be, Daniel thought, the longest debrief in history. Not that he had much of a memory of past debriefing but this one seemed to go on forever. His head hurt, he needed a cup of coffee and a good night’s sleep and what purpose could possibly be achieved by rehashing the mission over and over?
Finally, General Hammond stood. “Colonel Edwards, I’d like to see you and Teal’c in my office. The rest of you are dismissed.”
Daniel shot up and toward the door only to be stopped by Colonel O’Neill’s voice. “Daniel, my office.”
Thoughts of his coffeemaker danced in his head. “I need to stop by my office. How about I meet you there later?”
“Now, Daniel.” Jack replied in a voice that sounded like he meant business. With a loud sigh, Daniel followed him out the door.
***
“Sit down.” Daniel slumped in the seat. “Just so you know, the reason General Hammond kept Edwards and Teal’c after class is that they’re both getting a reprimand.”
Daniel jolted to awareness. “What? Why?”
“Because, Daniel, that mission was screwed up in so many ways.”
“No! Jack, we got the mineral, we kept the peace with the Unas.”
“An SG team member died, Daniel. Do you remember that?” Jack’s voice was clipped, cold.
Daniel sputtered. “That’s not fair, Jack.”
“Well, it isn’t fair to Lt. Ritter’s family, is it?” Jack paused but Daniel remained silent.
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F is for Fandom(Wormhole Xtreme!)
No One Expects the Fannish Inquisition
by splash_the_cat
The email sat in his inbox for weeks. He only even noticed it after scrolling back through ten screens of messages trying to find one about translating text on an artifact SG-18 had brought back, that Bill Lee insisted he'd sent months ago.
Daniel blinked at the subject line a few times before he opened it, and blinked several more times as he read the message. He then forwarded it to Sam with a note: "Am I being trolled?"
Three days later the message ended up back in his inbox, this time forwarded by Jack (via Sam, the traitor), with a note: THIS IS PERFECT YOU HAVE TO GO.
Two days after that, Daniel got another email, this one confirming his special scholar guest of honor registration for Con-Treme, the premier Wormhole X-Treme! fan convention, complete with the list of panels he'd been assigned to sit on. And a public lecture. And a Q&A. And judging the constume contest.
Daniel sat in front of his computer for six hours, until Jack accepted the video chat invite Daniel had been resending him every fifteen minutes. The chat window popped open to display the deck over the pond at Jack's cabin, backgrounded by a brilliant sunset. Jack's face resolved on the screen at an odd angle, apparently peering down over the top of the laptop screen. "Hey, Daniel."
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G is for Growing Up (Rite of Passage)
by thothmes
When it came to her uncles, Jack was the one with the season tickets, mostly for sports of various kinds. There were the Broncos in the fall, the Rockies in the summer, and of course the Avalanche through the winter, and when Cassie had come along, within a year, he had converted all those season tickets into season tickets for two. Mom had worried a bit about how much it was costing him, and sometimes she worried about the weather between Colorado Springs and the various venues in Denver, but one look at the two of them faces still showing traces of ketchup and mustard from their hot dogs at the Rockies game (apparently there was an Earth rule about that too) and wearing identical grins, under identical caps, and she’d folded. It was so wonderful to see her new daughter, who was still struggling with her loss, acting like a normal, care-free child. All the same, Janet was never quite able to figure out on those occasions which one was really more of a child. Sometimes she suspected it was the one with the graying hair.
But there was another set of season tickets, and those ones were a secret. Mom could know, but Cassie was absolutely not to share word of them with the rest of SG-1, not even Sam. Jack had season tickets to the opera. It was an easy secret to keep. The music, by itself would have been dismissed by her new classmates as desperately uncool, and there was nothing Cassie wanted more than to fit in, to be normal, unremarkable, just like everybody else. Well, as unremarkable as someone with hair her color could be, anyway. So when Jack took her for the first time, Cassie was expecting to have to spend an evening working desperately hard not to fidget. Boy was she wrong.
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H is for Holding On (Meridian)
by jdjunkie
The blare of the heart monitor was insistent and unrelenting in the heavy silence.
Daniel had flat-lined. Then Daniel had died. Left. Something.
Fraiser switched off the machine with a click that was shocking in its finality, offering a blessed relief from the dreadful noise that accompanied the dreadful truth.
Stunned, bereft and disbelieving, those gathered did not speak. No feelings were shared, no grief expressed. No one, it seemed, knew what to say or what to do. There was no precedent for this.
Eventually, when the silence stretched too taut, they left the iso room, Teal’c first, pausing only to incline his head once more towards the now-empty bed, then Jacob and Hammond, then Fraiser, who placed a careful arm around Sam’s shoulder. Jack stayed the longest, standing perfectly still, hands shoved resolutely in his pockets. Finally, when some of Janet’s staff moved in hesitantly to start clearing up, he walked away, too.
Daniel was gone.
Where did they go from here?
***
” If you are to die, Daniel Jackson, I wish you to know that I believe that the fight against the Goa'uld will have lost one of its greatest warriors. And I will have lost one of my greatest friends”.
Teal’c opened his eyes slowly. Kel-no-reem was proving impossible. It had been many years, many deaths and tragedies, since he had found himself unable to achieve the peace that kel-no-reem afforded him. But this loss was harder than most to bear.
He reached for a lit candle, raised it to eye level in his cupped hands and stared deep into the flame.
What was he hoping to find there? Absolution for past wrongs? He knew he would never find it. The wrong he had done Sha’uri and Daniel Jackson was so egregious, so abhorrent, that there was no absolution. He would never absolve himself of blame. And yet, over time, Daniel Jackson had forgiven him and come to regard Teal’c as a friend. A good man, he had once said. In the harsh, hard world Teal’c had inhabited before he joined the SGC, such forgiveness was unthinkable. His world was death and fear, a place where submission of will was all. There was no place for compassion, least of all toward himself.
Daniel Jackson had taught him much. Daniel Jackson had taught him what friendship meant. Teal’c was familiar with the ties that bound his warrior kin, but there had been no room for friendship with the comrades he called Brother.
For now, his thoughts turned to the best way to honor his friend, but it soon became apparent that clear thinking would be required to achieve that and his mind was too busy with the events of the day and the ghosts of the past.
He suspected he would come to know and understand more fully what he had learned from his teammate as he continued to fight the Goa’uld alongside the Tau’ri.
Teal’c stared into the wavering light of the candle for many more minutes, but calm and peace would not come.
He rose to his feet, crossed to his desk and ran his fingers over the Egyptian funerary statue that he’d hoped would offer Daniel Jackson comfort in his dying moments. He had no way of knowing if his friend had known he was there. He hoped so. Such comfort was all he’d been able to offer.
Teal’c’s quarters, so often his refuge, his place of comfort in a strange and often mystifying world, held no comfort for him at this moment.
He couldn’t be here right now; the room too small, his grief too great.
He picked up the statue and his BDU jacket and headed for the door.
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I is for "I Know You Are But What Am I?""(Fragile Balance)
by busaikko
"Jack doesn't buy the cover story," Hammond said, walking to the borrowed office's wide picture window and looking out over the grounds of the Air Force Academy. "But he's not going to make trouble."
"It's hard to lie to yourself," Jack agreed, and dropped down on the nearest sofa. There were three sofas, arranged in a U facing a terrible oil painting of eagles in flight. Jack twisted around so he didn't have to stare at the damn thing, put one foot on the coffee table, and then thought better of it. His feet were nearly his normal size, but they looked ridiculous at the end of his teenaged chicken legs. "But he can't be involved."
"We've got everything set up." Hammond glanced over at the airman who was guarding the door and nodded. He waited until she had left and the door was shut before continuing. "There are school attendance records and transcripts, a foster family. An America Online account for talking about teenager things like chess and opera. We believe that should satisfy the Colonel's curiosity for a few months." He held his hands out, like he was making an appeal - or holding an invisible balloon, Jack thought. "After that, we'll transfer your records to an out-of-state school. It's not hard to lose a person in this country of ours, particularly if the government's involved."
"He won't look that hard," Jack said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. "Trust me."
"I'm glad to hear that," Hammond said after a short pause.
"You know what really tees me off," Jack went on, and when Hammond turned around he had to take a deep breath to stave off the reflexive, defensive nah, nevermind. Hammond's expression was sympathetic, but Jack was well acquainted with how Hammond wielded that look like a weapon. "My kid... would have been eighteen. Going off to college, listening to heavy metal, telling me I'm full of it one minute and asking for the car keys the next." Jack refused to keep a count in his head of every stolen year, day, minute, but the knowledge that there was an ever-increasing measure of time without was always with him. "It's ironic, right? The last thing the world needs is another Jack O'Neill, and the one thing I'd give my life for would be - "
He cut himself off.
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J is for je ne sais quoi (Nightwalkers)
by draegonhawke
He wouldn't have admitted it back on Kelowna, where it could have cost him his position, but Jonas had begun to suspect that ethics was the study of undefinable gut feelings. Pick any formal law - maximizing happiness for the majority, minimizing suffering, prioritizing the correct balance of action and responsibility - and pretty soon you could put together a scenario abiding by those rules which most people would agree was an atrocity.
Thing was, that just put everyone back at square one. Whatever feels wrong, is wrong. And more than a few people took that to its contrapositive: whatever doesn't feel wrong, isn't wrong.
And that led to problems.
After lunch, Jonas headed back to his lab, and the research assistant he'd apparently inherited along with it. "Hey, Nyan," he greeted; Nyan looked up from a tall stack of books dragged up from the Archaeology and Linguistics Library, and gave him a smile. "Up for another round of A-B-K?"
Nyan winced in sympathy. "It was one of those missions, wasn't it?"
Jonas raised his eyebrows, and poured himself a cup of coffee.
Here they were, scientists in a military outfit, with a history of science overseen by military concerns. Once they'd bonded on that, it had become something of a game to compare notes. America, Bedrosia, Kelowna. Take a situation, guess how each nation would react. If there would be differences at all.
"Let's assume that out of some form of professional incompetence, an entire town is infested with immature Goa'uld symbiotes," Jonas said. "The symbiotes have a vested interest in preserving the status quo until they can complete their objective. The hosts have no conscious awareness of them. All anyone notices is that they're tired all the time, because the symbiotes are waiting until they're asleep so they can manipulate them into building a ship with spaceflight capabilities. Meanwhile, a branch of the government becomes aware of this, sets up containment protocols to ensure that the Goa'uld won't actually make it off the planet, and then sits back and observes in order to seize the ship once it's finished, returning the town to normal."
Nyan flipped the book closed.
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K is for Kinship (Crystal Skull)
by ivorygates
He was born the year the world ended, the youngest of nine children, on a little farm outside a little village in a place that ceased to exist soon thereafter. By the time he was four, his father and his two oldest brothers were dead, the farm lost, and his mother had taken the rest of them to the city, to Amsterdam, to live with Aunt Annika.
By the time he was five, only he and Aunt Annika were left. Everything the War hadn’t taken, the influenza epidemic did. Nicholas Ballard spent his entire life knowing that family, that place, are things the world takes from you. It was something he never accepted, just as he never accepted the logic of war, the credibility of violence.
His father had been a farmer. His aunt was a shopkeeper. Nicholas wanted more for himself: he worked and studied and saved, and in 1932 he entered the Universiteit van Amsterdam. There, he studied archaeology. There, he met Kaatje.
Kaatje Grieta van Coevorden was bright and merry and fearless. Her friends said she could do far better than a loutish shopkeeper. His friends said he could never get such a girl to look at him twice. Everyone said students should think of their studies instead of romance.
But he laughed at her jokes and she laughed at his theories. All around them, Europe grew darker: he wonders now if they didn’t care, or if they just didn’t notice. They married in 1939, in June. In September, Europe was at war, but Nicholas knew he and Kaatje were safe. The Netherlands had declared neutrality.
Their daughter, Claire, was born the following year, the month - May - the Nazis invaded their homeland.
Everything changed then.
He’d never taken any interest in anything outside his studies. Studying the past taught him the futility of war. Violence (he told Kaatje) never changed anything. (She had laughed bitterly, and pointed to the headlines in the morning paper.) But this was violence on a scale that dwarfed the maddest dreams of a Caesar or a Genghis. Violence coupled not to a mere lust for power, but to the propagation of an intolerable ideology.
And the Germans gave him no choice. There was no longer any neutral ground. One embraced the new world order they had brought with them in their conquest ... or defied it.
The price Nicholas paid for that defiance was higher than he could accept. Kaatje’s life. It did not matter that she gave it up willingly, if not gladly. He had already lost so much. Only Claire was left.
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L is for Luxation (Unending)
by paian
Auburn, Shawnee County, Kansas, 11:06 p.m.
Less than an hour after going to bed, Wendy and Frank wake gasping.
Frank lies still, trying to get his breath. Wendy turns and clutches at him; he puts his arms around her, wraps her up tight, and their hearts hammer against each other through their ribcages.
They know it wasn't just a bad dream. They know it wasn't a bad dream they happened to have at the same moment. They can feel in each other the old impulse to get up, go down the hall, check on the boys. In Frank it's so strong that he's flung an arm out to reach for his legs before he catches himself. He pulls Wendy closer against his side with the other arm.
They know where their younger son is; they can hear his voice through the window, rising up from the patio, quiet but reassuringly audible as he chats away on the phone with his girl. He's telling her what a nice visit he's having with the folks, how they'd love if she'd come along next time.
"He's all right," Frank says. He's not talking about that one.
"Yes," Wendy says. "I know. I feel that now. But what ... "
"I don't know," Frank says. "Best forgotten, maybe."
"Yes," Wendy says. But they both know that they'll be freezing at the sound of every ringing phone, every knock on the door, until they've got him alive and well on the other end of a telephone line.
Cheyenne Mountain, 2206 hours
Carolyn has worked at Stargate Command long enough to know that when she experiences a wave of vertigo so debilitating that she drops what's she holding and staggers, accompanied by a feeling of grief so visceral and so powerful that she comes close to vomiting, and a moment later feels so physically fine and emotionally serene that it's as if it never happened, it's unlikely that the battery of tests she mentally schedules herself for will indicate any somatic etiology.
She'll schedule them anyway. She'll have to take herself off duty in any case -- two SG teams have come back from missions with injuries serious enough that she was called back in, but there are enough personnel to cover -- and besides being the right course of action, it will keep her occupied.
Inexplicable calm after the inexplicable storm or not, she'll need to do whatever she can to keep her mind off the feeling that her father was irretrievably lost when they'd only just started to find their way back to each other.
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M is for Many (Ripple Effect)
by crazedturkey
"They want what?"
The airman looks a little taken aback. Ed is abashed for about ten seconds. He usually makes a point of not raising his voice no matter how frustrating the day.
Then he goes back to being just darn annoyed.
Gamely, the airman repeats himself. "They've asked for a hundred servings of blue jello, sir."
Ed heard him the first time, not being deaf and all, but wanted to hear it a second time so he could get properly irked. Today has been one hell of a day, even by his standards, and his standards are pretty darn high.
"I've already sent out four times the normal servings to the commissary. Along with enough food to feed the extra two hundred people that have magically appeared around here. My people are working hard enough already. What's wrong with the jello they have?"
He can see the airman swallowing nervously. Good, he thinks, although he knows he'll regret it later. He's thirty years older than this young fella and about a stone heavier. Someone needs to hear this though. Honestly.
"It's not blue, sir," the airman offers.
"It's not blue!" sputters Ed, before the penny finally drops. "This is Colonel bloody Carter isn't it?"
He can hear the shocked gasps from his staff behind him. Ed don't swear. Not normally. And he likes the Colonel.
"Yessir," says the beleaguered airman. "They, I mean she, wants it ASAP, sir."
"WELL SHE CAN'T BLOODY HAVE IT."
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N is for Need (Need)
The Emptiness Inside
by alynt
Addiction begins with the hope that something "out there" can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.
Jean Kilbourne
There were times when Jack O’Neill wished he’d listened to his gut and refused to allow civilians anywhere near the Stargate and definitely not through it. Bad enough there were slimy snakeheads waiting to chew their way through your neck to enslave you from the inside out, seems you couldn’t even trust a pretty princess with a death wish and delusions of grandeur, just waiting for some poor schmuck with a soft heart and no common sense to come racing to her rescue.
Daniel made a soft sound of distress and Jack sat back down on the chair by the bed, reaching out to squeeze one of Daniel’s hands, uttering murmurs of comfort. After holding Daniel in his arms in the storeroom while he sobbed his despair, a little handholding wasn’t going to make Jack feel ill at ease, even in front of the guards. Daniel was sleeping now at least, the shackles gone, faint tear tracks still visible on his cheeks, his hair wet with sweat. Doc Fraiser said she’d pumped enough sedative into his IV to put an elephant to sleep and still Daniel struggled, though feebly, to escape the sarcophagus’ addictive hold.
“I know what this is. I know what it’s like.”
If anyone knew what Daniel was going through as he crouched in the storeroom, disheveled, energy all but spent, weapon waving about shakily, it was Jack.
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O is for Ordinary Things (Beneath the Surface)
by thothmes
Janet Fraiser walked briskly into the infirmary, a heavy red tome under her arm, and proceeded directly to the large coffee urn in the corner that was her ostensible reason for being there. Years of medical training had taught her a thing or two, and one of them was how to get coffee from one of these industrial urns one handed, and she proceeded to show that skill with unconscious grace. There was plenty of coffee on offer at the nurse’s station in the infirmary, of course, but that was a small carafe, and as it sat it tended to become both very strong and notably bitter. If anyone asked, she was here for the less toxic brew available here.
She hoped no one would ask, and to that end, she sat herself down at a table in the corner with a good view of the one that SG-1 habitually took, and propped the heavy medical text upright and open to act as a bit of a screen. She was here to observe, not to be observed. She checked that her pager was on in case she should be needed, although it was doubtful. Supervisor Brenna was under Dr. Warner’s excellent care in the O.R., getting her arm tended to, and SG-1 had been queried, examined, and sent off to the showers, with orders to remain on base until she had cleared them to leave. Siler’s injury of the day had been an electrical burn so minor that Janet had left him in the care of one of the nurses.
There was something going on with SG-1, and before Janet cleared them, she was going to get to the bottom of it all.
Teal’c, as always, claimed that he was fine, that although he had been sick for a time when he had gone too long without kel’no’reem, he had recovered his memory in time to ensure a full return to health. To the best of her knowledge, Teal’c had never lied to her. She was inclined to believe him now.
Daniel was a bit broody, but had offered up that he was just thinking, comparing Daniel to Carlin. It was, he said, a fascinating study in personality development, and no, to the best of his knowledge he had no memory deficits. Then his blue eyes had twinkled mischievously. “Of course, if I did, how would I know?” he said. That was the sixty four thousand dollar question, right there.
It was Sam and the Colonel that had her most worried. Something was going on with them. There was a lot of studious not saying and not looking going on between those two, and the Colonel was uncharacteristically not trying to make her laugh, or anyone else for that matter. And red flag of red flags, they both said that everything was fine. Janet had seen Sam put away an alarming amount of wine sitting on the sofa in Janet’s living room being “fine”, and the Colonel was forever insisting that he was “fine” even as he left a visible blood trail behind him. Janet would believe fine when she saw it, and that was why she was here.
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P is for Perception (The Fifth Man)
by magickmoons
Kei'ya'aii stepped through the wormhole, returning to the small colony he had thought he would never see again. His mind was a jumble of thoughts about his recent experiences at the hands of the Jaffa, and more importantly, with SG-1.
He struggled to find the right words to explain these humans from Earth to the others of the Reole. It was vital that his people understand the opportunity they were being presented, but there had been nothing but mistrust of outsiders for so long. Secrecy had become almost as natural to his people now as their innate ability to manipulate others' perceptions. It had never even occurred to him to reveal himself when SG-1 had happened upon him, so deeply ingrained was that protective response.
It wasn't until he saw how devoted Colonel O'Neill was to his team, including Lt. Tyler, that he had started to question his assumptions. Watching O'Neill's willingness to put himself in harm's way for a new team member had finally convinced him that he could not take advantage of the Earth man's nature. But O'Neill had stubbornly refused to put himself first, even when Kei'ya'aii revealed his true form. His momentary surprise had quickly morphed into acceptance, and they had worked side by side, trying to hold off the Jaffa.
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Q is for Quantum Mirror (TBFTGOG)
by topazowl
“Quickly, the guy’s hurt! Get a medic, now!” The instructions were issued even as the gate was shutting down. The intonation echoed in Daniel’s ears and he attempted to sit up as he recognised Kawalsky’s voice.
“Charlie?”
Kawalsky turned to stare at Daniel then recognition followed.
“You’re that Doctor who came through the gate recently aren’t you, Doctor Daniel Jackson.”
“Yes! I know you, I knew you in my world. I bring bad news, I’m afraid”
“It’s gone” Kawalsky sighed.
“’Fraid so,” replied Daniel, “but they all died with honour. Now, I’ve got to get to P3R-233 quickly and stop the same thing happening in my world. No, no, leave it.” He finished as a medic tried to inspect his shoulder. Daniel staggered to his feet and attempted to walk to the DHD to dial P3R-233 but the sound of a gun safety’s being removed halted him.
“Why?” Daniel turned round to face Kawalsky with his hands out, palms up.
“Sorry Doc, can’t let you go just yet. Sergeant, dial Earth, see if we can get a connection.” Daniel stood back, understanding this move but needing to get back to the Quantum Mirror and back home before it shut down. Sam had gone for the controller but never got it to him.
“Whilst we try,” said Kawalsky, “I’m sure Colonel Reynolds would like to debrief you. If you’d follow me, Doctor.”
“No, I I ....”
“That’s an order, Sir.”
Daniel acquiesced and made to follow but collapsed in a heap as the pain and shock was getting to him. The medic rushed over, insisting he look at the shoulder.
“Can you fetch Colonel Reynolds?” Daniel asked. “I’ll talk to him here whilst the medic looks at my shoulder.”
At that moment, the dialling failed to engage chevron 7 for earth and Daniel looked beseechingly at Major Kawalsky.
“Or just let me go. Earth has gone, there is nothing you can do. Let me go save my world, please.”
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R is for Resignation (100 Days)
A Time for Change
by traycer_
It took a long time to give into fate and accept the inevitable fact that he was stuck on Edora. Jack fought against it, unwilling to believe that the cavalry, also known as his team, wasn't going to find a way to come charging through the universe to save him.
But fate was a wicked old witch, laughing at his attempts to hang onto his fading faith as he spent his days helping the Edorans rebuild, while mourning his losses along with their own. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and still Jack held on to hope with both hands that maybe one day someone would come.
But now, two months after that fateful day, he stood on the edge of the marsh and stared toward the mountains in the distance, his heart finally resigned to the fact that he was being foolish. No one was coming to the rescue. He knew that now. He was never going to see his home planet again.
He tried to use the others in the community as an excuse for his refusal to give in, but they were finally getting past their anger and accusations that he was the one who took their loved ones away, and were slowly starting to accept him in their fold. It helped, he supposed, that Laira insisted that he was now one of them, not to mention his willingness to help in rebuilding their homes. But their acceptance of him made it hard to hang onto his stubbornness…
Crap, he thought with resignation. What’s the use? He needed to accept the reality of his situation. It had been over two months and no ally ships in site. No one was coming, he realized again. He was well and truly stranded.
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S is for Standing Alone (Fallen)
by eilidh17
Archivist's note: the version on Eilidh's journal (link below) includes illustrations.
The city was old and vast, full of domed structures and towers with twisting spires. The broad streets with ochre-colored earthen walls were covered in a writing that seemed achingly familiar and yet not. Arrom could feel history bleeding out of these buildings - in their crumbling archways, in the long, narrow viaduct that swept overhead into the distance to some point he could not see, and even in the decaying plinths that lined what must have once been a grand thoroughfare, but was now overgrown and deserted.
On a blustery day, wind whistled through the city and danced in her abandoned streets, stirring up dust and plucking leaves from the clutches of withered and dying trees. Khordib believed the city was inhabited by the dead and the sounds they could hear were their voices carried on the wind, but Arrom could hear another voice more clearly - that of Khordib as his attempt at seriousness fell flat.
Arrom asked why they did not live in this city of halls and mud brick houses and unexplored places, but Khordib shook his head and told him that sometimes the ground moved and bricks fell; it was safer to be out in the open and near the fields.
The universe is vast and we are so small.
There was a fear that hid inside Arrom, steeled within his veins like it had always been a part of him, a coldness that lived like a thread threatening to snap with the slightest tension.
He does not yet know his place in this village of welcome strangers. They gave him clothes that matched their own, muted colors that reminded him of the river that runs through the field they found him in, a slice of blue that breaks the landscape but which feeds the people, giving up fish for their tables. Mostly, though, the nomads offered him a home within their camp. Theirs was a measure of trust that was unquestionable, which bothered Arrom more than perhaps it should have, because despite all they had given him he felt awkwardly out of place.
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T is for Tok'ra (Stargate: the Movie)
by roeskva
Garshaw looked up as Martouf entered her office. “What is it, Martouf?”
“We just got a message from our operative at Ra’s court.”
Garshaw sat up straighter. ”That is highly irregular!” She frowned at the young man.
Martouf nodded. “She felt the risk of detection was small compared to the potential importance of the information. Ra is overdue from his most recent trip to Abydos.”
“Overdue? He has probably just decided to spend some time on a pleasure planet on the way back!”
Yosuuf made a mental snort at Garshaw’s comment, tending to agree with her symbiote. However, the operative in question was Jolinar, and while she was certainly prone to unorthodox, even rash behaviour, she was also very experienced and too intelligent to make a dangerous decision without good reason. There might be more to this than just Ra taking off on a whim.
“Quite possible,” Martouf admitted. “Were it not for the fact that he was to meet with Heru’ur, Cronus, and Bastet. He is more than a day late for that meeting, with no explanation. In fact, no one knows where he is. Apparently his guests are now... quite furious.”
“I am not surprised!” Garshaw looked shocked. “Has Ra lost his mind! He risks war with such behaviour. Even a Supreme System Lord cannot ignore his staunchest allies!” She listened to her host, who suggested something might have happened to Ra. “There is no word at all on Ra’s whereabouts?”
“None.” Martouf hesitated, then voiced what both he and Lantash were thinking. “Could something have happened to Ra? Betrayal, perhaps? An attack?”
“Surely no one would dare do that - however much they would like to,” Garshaw said, conviction in her voice. “His allies are too strong, and I also doubt even Sokar would want to risk the chaos that would result, should Ra be killed.”
“Of course.” Martouf nodded, then turned to leave.
“Wait.” Garshaw thought about it for a moment. “Inform the other members of the Council that I wish to meet with them.”
Martouf inclined his head. “Yes, Master Garshaw.” He hurried off to carry out her orders.
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U is for Understanding
Kishotenketsu
by fignewton
Kishotenketsu: a story based on observing how change affects perception, rather than classical conflict plotlines
Jack hauled himself up the last few steps of the ladder and onto the roof. Straightening, he stretched until he felt his spine crack.
As usual, no traffic came through the quiet neighborhood street, allowing him to revel in the silence. He blew out a long, slow breath and watched the vapor dissipate into the chilly air. Everything was normal. Familiar. Ordinary. It was just another night of sharing the stars with his telescope and a bottle of beer, as he'd done every cloudless night for a year now.
Except it wasn't. Nothing was ever going to be the same, was it?
It wasn't the obvious changes in his life that made the difference. Not his retirement from the military, not -
(Charlie)
- not the loss of his son, not the divorce papers he'd found on the table when he'd come home. He'd dealt with that -
(or not dealt with it permanently, as he'd come too close to doing)
- dealt with that in his own way, and once he'd successfully moved past certain... tendencies, Jack was pretty sure he'd reacted more or less as he'd always done.
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U is for Unread
by sallymn
...Or as good as unread. Good. Bad. Whatever.
He stares at the two piles of books by his desk - a little less than clearly, since the glasses he hadn't needed during that glorious burst of alien-enhanced speed reading were hanging from one hand, gently swinging from his fingers. One pile - about twenty of them, all sizes and shapes and threatening unsteadily to topple over - have a post-it note on top, scrawled in his own hand, the writing made even more chicken-scratchy from the excitement he still remembers. Read in one night!
The other pile - about thirty, even more unsteady - have a similar even chicken-scratchier note. To read tomorrow night!! Except that the tomorrow night in question never came.
The Atenik armbands that upgraded the three SG-1 humans so well, that made them so superhuman and so stupidly reckless, that nearly killed them, are gone. And he knows better than to even mention in his General's or his doctor's hearing that he rather wishes they could try again. Just to get all the way through that beckoning, mocking to-read pile...
"S-see the point is... I can read really fast!"
No, he sighs. The point is, with the disastrous descent back into merely-human, he doesn't even remember most of what he read anyway, it had been all surface, no depth. Just as Sam had found the book she wrote - "in two hours!" - was astonishing in quantity and astonishingly absent in quality, and almost blushed her way into an even deeper decline as she deleted it from her hard drive.
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V is for Vaselov (Lockdown)
by gategremlyn
Jack ran his fingers through his hair and cursed the endless piles of paperwork that paraded across his desk. This... this is why he didn't want to be “the man.” He sighed, scrawled his signature, and reached for the next pile. A knock at the door gave him a momentary reprieve. “Come.”
“Hey.” Daniel stood in the doorway in a smart gray suit and tie.
“What do you want?” Jack snapped.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Everybody wants something.” He waved a hand over the mounds of paper.
“Ah, the burdens of command,” Daniel muttered. “And I do have a request, now that you bring it up.”
“Yeah?”
“I'd like to request that people stop zatting me - especially members of my team.”
“Is there a form for that?”
“I'd be willing to create one,” Daniel offered.
“Fine. Create one, fill it out in triplicate, and put it on my desk so I can ignore it.” Jack sighed again. “Is it time?”
“Five minutes,” Daniel said. “I just wanted to know if you were ready.”
“Do I have to say anything?”
“It's all taken care of. You just have to be there.”
“Yeah, okay.” Jack capped the pen and stood up. He shrugged his arms into the jacket of his dress blues, another reason he didn't want to be “the man.”
“Who's delivering the eulogy?”
“Colonel Chekov. He's one of the few people who knows about the program and knew Colonel Vaselov.”
They took the stairs slowly, Jack straightening his tie on the way down. “One of the worst things about the program is that we can't tell the families what happened.”
“I know.”
“The man dies a hero, and the best we can say is 'he died serving his country.' We can't even say he died saving the whole damn world.”
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W is for Wordless (The Quest)
by obsessivemuch1
As the blue-tinted glow faded, Baal noted two things. The first was the rather obvious fact he, and SG-1, had been transported to another part of the cave system. The second, was that the Orici had not. He was unsure what to feel about that - Adria had been a complication he'd not made allowance for. On the other hand, something within the cave had tempered her abilities. He'd lost whatever chance there'd been to remove her from the equation altogether.
And now what? Were they truly closer to finding the Sangreal? The chamber Baal found himself in appeared to be a roughly hewn laboratory of sorts. The way Jackson had harped on about Merlin, he'd expected something more... grand. Not this dank, dark cavern untouched for centuries.
The old man unconscious on the table didn't allay Baal's misgivings either. He, and the Repository that Vala Mal Doran had activated, were the only things of note in the chamber. Ancient or not, Merlin was not someone Baal wished to interact with. He'd had his fill with Anubis, and were not the Ori enough evidence that no being should have such power? The Goa'uld had hardly covered themselves in glory, of that he was painfully aware, but their godhood had been more smoke and mirrors. The Ori, and by extension the Ancients, were truly a risk.
Baal eyed the Repository. It was frustrating to know the device held so much knowledge when his physiology was no more compatible than that of O'Neill. What a disgusting thought.
Dragged along with Carter's investigation of the cave system, it proved that the transporter had moved them further than Baal had originally thought. Gone were the rolling green fields. Now a barren desert stretched around them. The Stargate sat at a slight distance, with the obelisk beyond. He was impressed - the idea of beaming people through an open wormhole had never occurred to him. It was indeed an effective way to hide something.
Or it was until the person seeking had all the knowledge of the Ancients and could mentally manipulate the DHD.
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X is for Unknown (1969)
by sg_fignewton
X: Denoting an unknown or unspecified person or thing. -- Oxford Dictionary
Daniel, leaning over Sam's shoulder, stabbed a finger at a name on the screen. "There! What about him?"
"What?" Sam frowned at the screen, disconcerted, then looked up at him.
"Michael Joseph Blassie, the Vietnam unknown in Arlington Cemetery that they finally identified last year. They reburied him in a military cemetery in Missouri, didn't they? Maybe that's our Michael."
"No," Jack said flatly.
"No?"
"No."
Daniel looked at him sideways. "Why not?"
"It's too pat. Even for time travel." Jack's grimace showed how much he enjoyed the need to make such a qualification.
"But the name..."
"There are lots of people named 'Michael' in the world, Daniel," Sam said, her voice cool as she turned back to her database search. "I know the timing seems right to you, but that doesn't mean Michael was First Lieutenant Blassie."
"Besides," Jack added, slouching back in his chair, "Blassie was a graduate of the Air Force Academy, not a long-haired Woodstock wannabe."
Daniel opened his mouth to protest the insult to the young idealist who had helped them, but stopped when a gentle hand closed over his arm.
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said quietly, "I am certain that O'Neill and Captain Carter believe you should abandon this theory."
Daniel looked at Teal'c's still expression, so unreadable to those who didn't know him and so rich in nuance to his friends and teammates. The faint tilt of his head, the slight droop of his eyelids, it all but screamed at Daniel: Stop.
He frowned, replaying the last moments in his mind. Then his eyes widened. Oh.
This wasn't a question of civilian versus military thinking, he realized, although Daniel always had to keep that factor in mind. He knew he was a product of academia, of the Oriental Institute in Chicago and UCLA, and he often had to force himself to stop and determine whether his resistance to a military decision was based on a genuine objection or was simply a knee-jerk reaction of protest. This time, he recognized that he'd allowed his scientific curiosity to steamroller over any other sensibilities. For Jack and Sam, reducing the identified unknown of Vietnam to their long-haired friend was just short of sacrilegious. Daniel took a deliberate mental step backwards, acknowledging that this was a matter of respect.
He gave Teal'c the tiniest of nods - message received - and turned back to focus on Sam's search.
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Y is for Yearning (FIAD)
by dennydj
He woke disoriented, still tethered to the realm of dreams. Soft light filtered through the slats of the window blind, enough to discern the familiar furnishings of his bedroom.
Instinctively, he reached out, his hand searching for the body that should be lying next to him, the one that had been there only hours before. But the space next to him was empty and cold, the warmth of his dream dissipating as his mind became grounded in the present.
Sha’re was gone. Irrevocably lost. She had never lain next to him in this bed, in this house, and never would. But he could still feel the ghost of her touch as her fingers gently stroked his face. Could still smell vanilla and sandalwood mixed with something that was uniquely Sha’re.
She had been here - but she hadn’t.
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut as though it would allow him to draw her back from wherever she’d gone. Seconds and minutes passed, the light intensifying behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes, finding the room transformed by daylight, the shadows banished along with his dreams.
The jarring buzz of the phone severed the last thread tethering him to his dream world.
“Hello?”
“Daniel - briefing in forty-five minutes!”
“Hello to you, too, Jack.”
“Are you still in bed?”
“No, I’m in the shower.”
“Funny. Get your butt in gear.”
They were scheduled to go off-world tomorrow. For some reason, he was having trouble getting excited about the prospect. He’d never find the one thing he’d always searched for. No matter how many ruins they explored or new cultures they met, they would never take the place of that ‘one thing’.
“Daniel?” He’d taken too long to answer and now he had to deal with ‘concerned Jack’.
“I’ll be there; don’t worry.”
“Tick tock, Daniel.”
He hung up the phone and lay staring at the ceiling. He reached out, once again finding the space next to him cold and empty.
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Z is for Zebras (Legacy)
by sidlj
They drill it into you in medical school. The most likely explanation for whatever symptoms a patient presents with, is the most likely explanation. 'Think horses.' Daniel's diagnosis was clear-cut. Migraines, hallucinations, increased dopamine levels... Everything added together pointed in one direction. I called in Doctor MacKenzie. He agreed with my conclusions.
Schizophrenia.
We put Daniel away. Committed him, medicated him, stopped listening to him. The only thing that saved Daniel in the end was Machello's device transferring itself into Teal'c.
Teal'c inadvertently saved Daniel's sanity and ended up nearly losing his own life. Daniel saved Teal'c by telling us what we should be looking for.
What I learned in medical school had been of no use to anyone up to that point. My sole worthwhile contribution in the entire process was ultimately the idea to use the centrifuge to make an injection of Sam's blood safe for the rest of us. Everything else I did or said was either useless or harmful.
'First do no harm' is the other thing they drill into you in med school.
I failed Daniel in every way.
I am the chief medical officer of a command that has the word 'Stargate' in its title. Why did I assume that the mundane answer would be the right one, when my patients travel for a living to other planets?
God help me, from now on, when I hear hoofbeats, I am going to think zebras.
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Enjoy over 42,000 words of episode related fic! Story lengths range from 240 words to over 3,800. Ratings range from G to PG-13. Expect spoilers throughout the entire series, and references to canonical character deaths.
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Stargate: the Movie
Season One: COTG / Fire and Water / TBFTGOG
Season Two: Need / 1969
Season Three: Legacy / Demons / FIAD / 100 Days / New Ground / Crystal Skull
Season Four: Upgrades / The First Ones / Beneath the Surface / The Light
Season Five: The Fifth Man / Rite of Passage / Wormhole Xtreme! / Meridian
Season Six: Nightwalkers
Season Seven: Fallen / Fragile Balance / Enemy Mine
Season Eight: Lockdown
Season Nine: Ripple Effect
Season Ten: The Quest / Unending
A is for Abandoned (Fire and Water)
by annieb1955
“To be alone is to be different, to be different is to be alone.”
Suzanne Gordon “Lonely In America” 1976.
Intellectually Daniel knew his team hadn't meant to leave him behind on Oannes. Instinctively though he'd felt abandoned. Still did. Especially when he’d come back to find his apartment and his office packed up, most of his belongings squared away in cardboard boxes with labels reading "Property of Dr. Daniel Jackson, deceased" slapped haphazardly on the sides. He was making some little headway on restoring his office back to normality when Sam poked her head around the corner of the door. "Need a hand?" she asked. "We're on stand down for the rest of the week so I thought I'd drop by and see what I could do to help."
"No," he said, knowing it sounded short and pissy and unable to really care even when Sam's face dropped. "Sorry, it's just that I know where everything used to be and it's easier if I do it myself."
"Sure," she said fake-brightly, "I understand."
Daniel was sure she didn't understand at all but he just nodded a goodbye at her as she left and went on with what he'd been doing.
He avoided talking to anyone at lunch by not going to the mess hall and instead nibbling on a powerbar he found in his top desk drawer when he was sorting papers. He’d drained his coffeepot by 3 o’clock and gave thought to making another but decided against it when he realized that going out to get more water from the fountain in the hallway increased the chances of him running into Sam again, or Teal’c, or God forbid, Jack. Somehow it was seeing Jack that bothered him the most though he couldn’t really put his finger on why and at this juncture wasn’t inclined to analyze it. Instead he put the coffee pot back and hurried out of his office, down the corridor to the elevator, which he rode up to the parking level then signed himself out at the security desk there and almost ran out to his car. By the time he got home the headache he’d had ever since he’d got back from Oannes, and that Dr. Fraiser said was a result of the memory device Nem had used on him, had soared to new heights and he let himself in his front door and closed it behind him with a sigh of relief.
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B is for Blame (The First Ones)
by annieb1955
"Where's Daniel?" Jack asked, looking around the mess hall as he pulled up a chair at the table across from Sam Carter and Teal'c.
"He asked for a day off," Carter said, around a mouthful of jello. "Said there was something he needed to do, and as his wrists are still pretty sore from being tied up and he's still suffering headaches from that bang on the head Chaka gave him, Janet told General Hammond he could probably use a day or so topside."
"Uh huh." Jack shoved his barely touched plate over to Teal'c. He had a feeling he knew where Daniel was going and what he was doing and he decided he might just need someone watching his six while he did it. "Enjoy, big guy," he said as Teal'c arched an inquiring eyebrow at him. "I'm not really hungry," he said. "I'll catch you guys tomorrow. I'm kinda tired. Think I'll knock off early myself."
Carter nodded and waved her spoon at him while Teal'c hoed into the food with enthusiasm. Jack headed for Hammond's office and apprised him of his plans then caught the elevator up to the parking level and signed out. In his truck, he looked at the slip of paper he'd gotten from Walter on his way out of Hammond's office then checked the route and headed off.
They'd only been back a day since rescuing Daniel from the Unas, Chaka. Daniel had been exhausted by the time they'd caught up with him, his wrists torn and bruised from the rope Chaka had bound him with as he'd dragged Daniel back to his home territory like some big hunting trophy he wanted to show off. Despite that, Jack had been impressed by Daniel's resourcefulness during his captivity, the way he'd left clues for anyone looking for him to follow, the fact that he'd kept his head and managed to befriend the young Unas and prevent himself from being killed. That they rescued Daniel was the only upside of that mission. The downside was losing the people they had.
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B is for Beholden (The Light)
by alynt
"Not a bad place for a three week vacation, huh?"
Daniel turned his head at the sound of Jack's voice then stood and tucked his notepad into his pocket. "Depends," he replied.
Jack quirked an eyebrow. "On what?"
Daniel shrugged. "On what your idea of the perfect vacation is."
"I'm guessing this isn't yours then."
"I'd rather be out in the desert on a dig. I was never one for bright lights, big city kind of stuff."
Jack gazed around the Light Room, almost but not quite looking at the machine that had caused so much trouble for them all. He tried not to think of the men who had died, the time to honor and mourn them would come later when they could return to Earth. He didn't want to think that it had almost killed Daniel either but it was difficult to keep his mind free of the images of Daniel on the balcony, about to jump, of him lying comatose in the infirmary and of the gut-wrenching moment when Daniel's heart had stopped just before Jack had carried him back to the planet.
"Mine either," he said finally. "I'm going for a walk on the beach. Wanna come?"
"I was going to take another look -"
"Come on." Jack grabbed Daniel's arm and pretty much dragged him out of the room. He was relieved when Daniel appeared to go with the flow and followed him without another word.
It was a perfect day for beachwalking. Jack picked up a piece of driftwood, hefting it in his hands before trailing one end in the sand as he walked.
"The light is safe now, you know," Daniel said.
"Yep, so Carter said, but you know me, never take a risk unless it's worth taking. No reason to be going in there any more than we have to, I figure." Jack waved a hand at the expanse of beach and water. "Way better things to look at than that."
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C is for Command Constants (New Ground)
by sg1jb
Tired and disquieted, George wished for nothing more than the luxury of closing his eyes and running his hands through his hair to massage his aching head. Unfortunately, the constants of command made that impossible at the moment. Despite that more often than not the need was the bane of his existence, he had to maintain an attentive, competent, and impartial demeanour. And anyway, even if command did not preclude such personal freedom of expression, there was still an obvious impediment to indulging in that sort of self-comfort. He really missed having hair.
After having spent countless, anxiety- fraught hours helpless to intervene in whatever was happening to his people - cages, for God's sake; they'd been confined in barred cages - he dearly wanted to hang on to the bloom of pleasure he'd felt when the clattering on the gate's ramp had ended and the head-count had come up complete. While that satisfaction had remained unbent during the quick, informal hallway chat with O'Neill and throughout most of this subsequent debrief, now the intensity of his relief was tempered by the realisation that something was being left unsaid.
No matter if somewhat dented, where all team members showed up on this side of the 'gate and stayed alive long enough to get back into the saddle for another ride was considered, in the SGC's books, a safe return. And a safe return plus formal clearance after all medical and debriefing reviews was normally enough to put most missions to bed - even ones that had gone sideways. Regardless of small cages, taser equivalents, and Teal'c's ordeal, given what he'd heard up until the last five minutes of this meeting George had expected this post-mission progression to follow suit.
Debriefings featured heavily in George's command routine; he had a lot of experience with them and was no slouch in reading between the lines. In the last few minutes of this one, he'd caught a hint of the small, carefully protected gap in the narrative, and that it was so covetously hidden gave him reason to suspect that one team member might not be moving on from this mission quite so readily as the others.
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D is for Demons (Demons)
Evensong
by PrincessofGeeks
When Daniel arrived at Teal'c's quarters, Sam was already there.
She was standing in the open door with her arms folded, waiting, in civilian dress, as Teal'c shrugged into a jacket.
"Um," Daniel said.
"Doctor Fraiser has cleared me, and Captain Carter has secured permission for me to leave Stargate Command for twenty-four hours," Teal'c said.
"Great," Daniel said. "I just. I was wanting to... where are you going?"
"Out," Sam said, more tersely than he was used to hearing from her. "Come with us."
"Um, okay. I have to change."
"Meet us at my place," Sam said, and she took Teal'c by the arm, hardly waiting for him to grab a watch cap before she was tugging him away, up the gray corridor toward the elevator.
Daniel was still standing there, bemused, looking at the closed door to Teal'c's quarters, when he heard cautious footsteps behind him. He turned to see Jack.
"They just left," Daniel said.
"What?" Jack said. There was a butterfly bandage on his eyebrow, Daniel noted. The blow he'd suffered back on the planet would probably leave a scar. What would Teal'c be left with?
"Come on," Daniel said, heading for the locker room. "I'll explain on the way."
At Sam's cottage, Daniel and Sam drank wine -- a cheap white that Sam apologized for, over Daniel's protestations that it was fine; he was the antithesis of a wine snob. All four of them looked a little stiff, a little formal, crammed into Sam's small living room. Daniel and Sam spent a couple of awkward moments talking about what bad wine one became inured to in grad school, but Teal'c interrupted them. He and Jack were drinking ice water.
"The only vehicle capable of transporting all of us comfortably will be your Volvo sedan, Captain Carter," Teal'c said. "And we will need to depart in approximately twenty of your minutes in order to arrive early."
"Early for what?" Jack said.
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E is for Enemy Mine (Enemy Mine)
by sg_wonderland
This had to be, Daniel thought, the longest debrief in history. Not that he had much of a memory of past debriefing but this one seemed to go on forever. His head hurt, he needed a cup of coffee and a good night’s sleep and what purpose could possibly be achieved by rehashing the mission over and over?
Finally, General Hammond stood. “Colonel Edwards, I’d like to see you and Teal’c in my office. The rest of you are dismissed.”
Daniel shot up and toward the door only to be stopped by Colonel O’Neill’s voice. “Daniel, my office.”
Thoughts of his coffeemaker danced in his head. “I need to stop by my office. How about I meet you there later?”
“Now, Daniel.” Jack replied in a voice that sounded like he meant business. With a loud sigh, Daniel followed him out the door.
***
“Sit down.” Daniel slumped in the seat. “Just so you know, the reason General Hammond kept Edwards and Teal’c after class is that they’re both getting a reprimand.”
Daniel jolted to awareness. “What? Why?”
“Because, Daniel, that mission was screwed up in so many ways.”
“No! Jack, we got the mineral, we kept the peace with the Unas.”
“An SG team member died, Daniel. Do you remember that?” Jack’s voice was clipped, cold.
Daniel sputtered. “That’s not fair, Jack.”
“Well, it isn’t fair to Lt. Ritter’s family, is it?” Jack paused but Daniel remained silent.
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F is for Fandom(Wormhole Xtreme!)
No One Expects the Fannish Inquisition
by splash_the_cat
The email sat in his inbox for weeks. He only even noticed it after scrolling back through ten screens of messages trying to find one about translating text on an artifact SG-18 had brought back, that Bill Lee insisted he'd sent months ago.
Daniel blinked at the subject line a few times before he opened it, and blinked several more times as he read the message. He then forwarded it to Sam with a note: "Am I being trolled?"
Three days later the message ended up back in his inbox, this time forwarded by Jack (via Sam, the traitor), with a note: THIS IS PERFECT YOU HAVE TO GO.
Two days after that, Daniel got another email, this one confirming his special scholar guest of honor registration for Con-Treme, the premier Wormhole X-Treme! fan convention, complete with the list of panels he'd been assigned to sit on. And a public lecture. And a Q&A. And judging the constume contest.
Daniel sat in front of his computer for six hours, until Jack accepted the video chat invite Daniel had been resending him every fifteen minutes. The chat window popped open to display the deck over the pond at Jack's cabin, backgrounded by a brilliant sunset. Jack's face resolved on the screen at an odd angle, apparently peering down over the top of the laptop screen. "Hey, Daniel."
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G is for Growing Up (Rite of Passage)
by thothmes
When it came to her uncles, Jack was the one with the season tickets, mostly for sports of various kinds. There were the Broncos in the fall, the Rockies in the summer, and of course the Avalanche through the winter, and when Cassie had come along, within a year, he had converted all those season tickets into season tickets for two. Mom had worried a bit about how much it was costing him, and sometimes she worried about the weather between Colorado Springs and the various venues in Denver, but one look at the two of them faces still showing traces of ketchup and mustard from their hot dogs at the Rockies game (apparently there was an Earth rule about that too) and wearing identical grins, under identical caps, and she’d folded. It was so wonderful to see her new daughter, who was still struggling with her loss, acting like a normal, care-free child. All the same, Janet was never quite able to figure out on those occasions which one was really more of a child. Sometimes she suspected it was the one with the graying hair.
But there was another set of season tickets, and those ones were a secret. Mom could know, but Cassie was absolutely not to share word of them with the rest of SG-1, not even Sam. Jack had season tickets to the opera. It was an easy secret to keep. The music, by itself would have been dismissed by her new classmates as desperately uncool, and there was nothing Cassie wanted more than to fit in, to be normal, unremarkable, just like everybody else. Well, as unremarkable as someone with hair her color could be, anyway. So when Jack took her for the first time, Cassie was expecting to have to spend an evening working desperately hard not to fidget. Boy was she wrong.
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H is for Holding On (Meridian)
by jdjunkie
The blare of the heart monitor was insistent and unrelenting in the heavy silence.
Daniel had flat-lined. Then Daniel had died. Left. Something.
Fraiser switched off the machine with a click that was shocking in its finality, offering a blessed relief from the dreadful noise that accompanied the dreadful truth.
Stunned, bereft and disbelieving, those gathered did not speak. No feelings were shared, no grief expressed. No one, it seemed, knew what to say or what to do. There was no precedent for this.
Eventually, when the silence stretched too taut, they left the iso room, Teal’c first, pausing only to incline his head once more towards the now-empty bed, then Jacob and Hammond, then Fraiser, who placed a careful arm around Sam’s shoulder. Jack stayed the longest, standing perfectly still, hands shoved resolutely in his pockets. Finally, when some of Janet’s staff moved in hesitantly to start clearing up, he walked away, too.
Daniel was gone.
Where did they go from here?
***
” If you are to die, Daniel Jackson, I wish you to know that I believe that the fight against the Goa'uld will have lost one of its greatest warriors. And I will have lost one of my greatest friends”.
Teal’c opened his eyes slowly. Kel-no-reem was proving impossible. It had been many years, many deaths and tragedies, since he had found himself unable to achieve the peace that kel-no-reem afforded him. But this loss was harder than most to bear.
He reached for a lit candle, raised it to eye level in his cupped hands and stared deep into the flame.
What was he hoping to find there? Absolution for past wrongs? He knew he would never find it. The wrong he had done Sha’uri and Daniel Jackson was so egregious, so abhorrent, that there was no absolution. He would never absolve himself of blame. And yet, over time, Daniel Jackson had forgiven him and come to regard Teal’c as a friend. A good man, he had once said. In the harsh, hard world Teal’c had inhabited before he joined the SGC, such forgiveness was unthinkable. His world was death and fear, a place where submission of will was all. There was no place for compassion, least of all toward himself.
Daniel Jackson had taught him much. Daniel Jackson had taught him what friendship meant. Teal’c was familiar with the ties that bound his warrior kin, but there had been no room for friendship with the comrades he called Brother.
For now, his thoughts turned to the best way to honor his friend, but it soon became apparent that clear thinking would be required to achieve that and his mind was too busy with the events of the day and the ghosts of the past.
He suspected he would come to know and understand more fully what he had learned from his teammate as he continued to fight the Goa’uld alongside the Tau’ri.
Teal’c stared into the wavering light of the candle for many more minutes, but calm and peace would not come.
He rose to his feet, crossed to his desk and ran his fingers over the Egyptian funerary statue that he’d hoped would offer Daniel Jackson comfort in his dying moments. He had no way of knowing if his friend had known he was there. He hoped so. Such comfort was all he’d been able to offer.
Teal’c’s quarters, so often his refuge, his place of comfort in a strange and often mystifying world, held no comfort for him at this moment.
He couldn’t be here right now; the room too small, his grief too great.
He picked up the statue and his BDU jacket and headed for the door.
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I is for "I Know You Are But What Am I?""(Fragile Balance)
by busaikko
"Jack doesn't buy the cover story," Hammond said, walking to the borrowed office's wide picture window and looking out over the grounds of the Air Force Academy. "But he's not going to make trouble."
"It's hard to lie to yourself," Jack agreed, and dropped down on the nearest sofa. There were three sofas, arranged in a U facing a terrible oil painting of eagles in flight. Jack twisted around so he didn't have to stare at the damn thing, put one foot on the coffee table, and then thought better of it. His feet were nearly his normal size, but they looked ridiculous at the end of his teenaged chicken legs. "But he can't be involved."
"We've got everything set up." Hammond glanced over at the airman who was guarding the door and nodded. He waited until she had left and the door was shut before continuing. "There are school attendance records and transcripts, a foster family. An America Online account for talking about teenager things like chess and opera. We believe that should satisfy the Colonel's curiosity for a few months." He held his hands out, like he was making an appeal - or holding an invisible balloon, Jack thought. "After that, we'll transfer your records to an out-of-state school. It's not hard to lose a person in this country of ours, particularly if the government's involved."
"He won't look that hard," Jack said, drumming his fingers against his thighs. "Trust me."
"I'm glad to hear that," Hammond said after a short pause.
"You know what really tees me off," Jack went on, and when Hammond turned around he had to take a deep breath to stave off the reflexive, defensive nah, nevermind. Hammond's expression was sympathetic, but Jack was well acquainted with how Hammond wielded that look like a weapon. "My kid... would have been eighteen. Going off to college, listening to heavy metal, telling me I'm full of it one minute and asking for the car keys the next." Jack refused to keep a count in his head of every stolen year, day, minute, but the knowledge that there was an ever-increasing measure of time without was always with him. "It's ironic, right? The last thing the world needs is another Jack O'Neill, and the one thing I'd give my life for would be - "
He cut himself off.
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J is for je ne sais quoi (Nightwalkers)
by draegonhawke
He wouldn't have admitted it back on Kelowna, where it could have cost him his position, but Jonas had begun to suspect that ethics was the study of undefinable gut feelings. Pick any formal law - maximizing happiness for the majority, minimizing suffering, prioritizing the correct balance of action and responsibility - and pretty soon you could put together a scenario abiding by those rules which most people would agree was an atrocity.
Thing was, that just put everyone back at square one. Whatever feels wrong, is wrong. And more than a few people took that to its contrapositive: whatever doesn't feel wrong, isn't wrong.
And that led to problems.
After lunch, Jonas headed back to his lab, and the research assistant he'd apparently inherited along with it. "Hey, Nyan," he greeted; Nyan looked up from a tall stack of books dragged up from the Archaeology and Linguistics Library, and gave him a smile. "Up for another round of A-B-K?"
Nyan winced in sympathy. "It was one of those missions, wasn't it?"
Jonas raised his eyebrows, and poured himself a cup of coffee.
Here they were, scientists in a military outfit, with a history of science overseen by military concerns. Once they'd bonded on that, it had become something of a game to compare notes. America, Bedrosia, Kelowna. Take a situation, guess how each nation would react. If there would be differences at all.
"Let's assume that out of some form of professional incompetence, an entire town is infested with immature Goa'uld symbiotes," Jonas said. "The symbiotes have a vested interest in preserving the status quo until they can complete their objective. The hosts have no conscious awareness of them. All anyone notices is that they're tired all the time, because the symbiotes are waiting until they're asleep so they can manipulate them into building a ship with spaceflight capabilities. Meanwhile, a branch of the government becomes aware of this, sets up containment protocols to ensure that the Goa'uld won't actually make it off the planet, and then sits back and observes in order to seize the ship once it's finished, returning the town to normal."
Nyan flipped the book closed.
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K is for Kinship (Crystal Skull)
by ivorygates
He was born the year the world ended, the youngest of nine children, on a little farm outside a little village in a place that ceased to exist soon thereafter. By the time he was four, his father and his two oldest brothers were dead, the farm lost, and his mother had taken the rest of them to the city, to Amsterdam, to live with Aunt Annika.
By the time he was five, only he and Aunt Annika were left. Everything the War hadn’t taken, the influenza epidemic did. Nicholas Ballard spent his entire life knowing that family, that place, are things the world takes from you. It was something he never accepted, just as he never accepted the logic of war, the credibility of violence.
His father had been a farmer. His aunt was a shopkeeper. Nicholas wanted more for himself: he worked and studied and saved, and in 1932 he entered the Universiteit van Amsterdam. There, he studied archaeology. There, he met Kaatje.
Kaatje Grieta van Coevorden was bright and merry and fearless. Her friends said she could do far better than a loutish shopkeeper. His friends said he could never get such a girl to look at him twice. Everyone said students should think of their studies instead of romance.
But he laughed at her jokes and she laughed at his theories. All around them, Europe grew darker: he wonders now if they didn’t care, or if they just didn’t notice. They married in 1939, in June. In September, Europe was at war, but Nicholas knew he and Kaatje were safe. The Netherlands had declared neutrality.
Their daughter, Claire, was born the following year, the month - May - the Nazis invaded their homeland.
Everything changed then.
He’d never taken any interest in anything outside his studies. Studying the past taught him the futility of war. Violence (he told Kaatje) never changed anything. (She had laughed bitterly, and pointed to the headlines in the morning paper.) But this was violence on a scale that dwarfed the maddest dreams of a Caesar or a Genghis. Violence coupled not to a mere lust for power, but to the propagation of an intolerable ideology.
And the Germans gave him no choice. There was no longer any neutral ground. One embraced the new world order they had brought with them in their conquest ... or defied it.
The price Nicholas paid for that defiance was higher than he could accept. Kaatje’s life. It did not matter that she gave it up willingly, if not gladly. He had already lost so much. Only Claire was left.
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L is for Luxation (Unending)
by paian
Auburn, Shawnee County, Kansas, 11:06 p.m.
Less than an hour after going to bed, Wendy and Frank wake gasping.
Frank lies still, trying to get his breath. Wendy turns and clutches at him; he puts his arms around her, wraps her up tight, and their hearts hammer against each other through their ribcages.
They know it wasn't just a bad dream. They know it wasn't a bad dream they happened to have at the same moment. They can feel in each other the old impulse to get up, go down the hall, check on the boys. In Frank it's so strong that he's flung an arm out to reach for his legs before he catches himself. He pulls Wendy closer against his side with the other arm.
They know where their younger son is; they can hear his voice through the window, rising up from the patio, quiet but reassuringly audible as he chats away on the phone with his girl. He's telling her what a nice visit he's having with the folks, how they'd love if she'd come along next time.
"He's all right," Frank says. He's not talking about that one.
"Yes," Wendy says. "I know. I feel that now. But what ... "
"I don't know," Frank says. "Best forgotten, maybe."
"Yes," Wendy says. But they both know that they'll be freezing at the sound of every ringing phone, every knock on the door, until they've got him alive and well on the other end of a telephone line.
Cheyenne Mountain, 2206 hours
Carolyn has worked at Stargate Command long enough to know that when she experiences a wave of vertigo so debilitating that she drops what's she holding and staggers, accompanied by a feeling of grief so visceral and so powerful that she comes close to vomiting, and a moment later feels so physically fine and emotionally serene that it's as if it never happened, it's unlikely that the battery of tests she mentally schedules herself for will indicate any somatic etiology.
She'll schedule them anyway. She'll have to take herself off duty in any case -- two SG teams have come back from missions with injuries serious enough that she was called back in, but there are enough personnel to cover -- and besides being the right course of action, it will keep her occupied.
Inexplicable calm after the inexplicable storm or not, she'll need to do whatever she can to keep her mind off the feeling that her father was irretrievably lost when they'd only just started to find their way back to each other.
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M is for Many (Ripple Effect)
by crazedturkey
"They want what?"
The airman looks a little taken aback. Ed is abashed for about ten seconds. He usually makes a point of not raising his voice no matter how frustrating the day.
Then he goes back to being just darn annoyed.
Gamely, the airman repeats himself. "They've asked for a hundred servings of blue jello, sir."
Ed heard him the first time, not being deaf and all, but wanted to hear it a second time so he could get properly irked. Today has been one hell of a day, even by his standards, and his standards are pretty darn high.
"I've already sent out four times the normal servings to the commissary. Along with enough food to feed the extra two hundred people that have magically appeared around here. My people are working hard enough already. What's wrong with the jello they have?"
He can see the airman swallowing nervously. Good, he thinks, although he knows he'll regret it later. He's thirty years older than this young fella and about a stone heavier. Someone needs to hear this though. Honestly.
"It's not blue, sir," the airman offers.
"It's not blue!" sputters Ed, before the penny finally drops. "This is Colonel bloody Carter isn't it?"
He can hear the shocked gasps from his staff behind him. Ed don't swear. Not normally. And he likes the Colonel.
"Yessir," says the beleaguered airman. "They, I mean she, wants it ASAP, sir."
"WELL SHE CAN'T BLOODY HAVE IT."
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N is for Need (Need)
The Emptiness Inside
by alynt
Addiction begins with the hope that something "out there" can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.
Jean Kilbourne
There were times when Jack O’Neill wished he’d listened to his gut and refused to allow civilians anywhere near the Stargate and definitely not through it. Bad enough there were slimy snakeheads waiting to chew their way through your neck to enslave you from the inside out, seems you couldn’t even trust a pretty princess with a death wish and delusions of grandeur, just waiting for some poor schmuck with a soft heart and no common sense to come racing to her rescue.
Daniel made a soft sound of distress and Jack sat back down on the chair by the bed, reaching out to squeeze one of Daniel’s hands, uttering murmurs of comfort. After holding Daniel in his arms in the storeroom while he sobbed his despair, a little handholding wasn’t going to make Jack feel ill at ease, even in front of the guards. Daniel was sleeping now at least, the shackles gone, faint tear tracks still visible on his cheeks, his hair wet with sweat. Doc Fraiser said she’d pumped enough sedative into his IV to put an elephant to sleep and still Daniel struggled, though feebly, to escape the sarcophagus’ addictive hold.
“I know what this is. I know what it’s like.”
If anyone knew what Daniel was going through as he crouched in the storeroom, disheveled, energy all but spent, weapon waving about shakily, it was Jack.
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O is for Ordinary Things (Beneath the Surface)
by thothmes
Janet Fraiser walked briskly into the infirmary, a heavy red tome under her arm, and proceeded directly to the large coffee urn in the corner that was her ostensible reason for being there. Years of medical training had taught her a thing or two, and one of them was how to get coffee from one of these industrial urns one handed, and she proceeded to show that skill with unconscious grace. There was plenty of coffee on offer at the nurse’s station in the infirmary, of course, but that was a small carafe, and as it sat it tended to become both very strong and notably bitter. If anyone asked, she was here for the less toxic brew available here.
She hoped no one would ask, and to that end, she sat herself down at a table in the corner with a good view of the one that SG-1 habitually took, and propped the heavy medical text upright and open to act as a bit of a screen. She was here to observe, not to be observed. She checked that her pager was on in case she should be needed, although it was doubtful. Supervisor Brenna was under Dr. Warner’s excellent care in the O.R., getting her arm tended to, and SG-1 had been queried, examined, and sent off to the showers, with orders to remain on base until she had cleared them to leave. Siler’s injury of the day had been an electrical burn so minor that Janet had left him in the care of one of the nurses.
There was something going on with SG-1, and before Janet cleared them, she was going to get to the bottom of it all.
Teal’c, as always, claimed that he was fine, that although he had been sick for a time when he had gone too long without kel’no’reem, he had recovered his memory in time to ensure a full return to health. To the best of her knowledge, Teal’c had never lied to her. She was inclined to believe him now.
Daniel was a bit broody, but had offered up that he was just thinking, comparing Daniel to Carlin. It was, he said, a fascinating study in personality development, and no, to the best of his knowledge he had no memory deficits. Then his blue eyes had twinkled mischievously. “Of course, if I did, how would I know?” he said. That was the sixty four thousand dollar question, right there.
It was Sam and the Colonel that had her most worried. Something was going on with them. There was a lot of studious not saying and not looking going on between those two, and the Colonel was uncharacteristically not trying to make her laugh, or anyone else for that matter. And red flag of red flags, they both said that everything was fine. Janet had seen Sam put away an alarming amount of wine sitting on the sofa in Janet’s living room being “fine”, and the Colonel was forever insisting that he was “fine” even as he left a visible blood trail behind him. Janet would believe fine when she saw it, and that was why she was here.
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P is for Perception (The Fifth Man)
by magickmoons
Kei'ya'aii stepped through the wormhole, returning to the small colony he had thought he would never see again. His mind was a jumble of thoughts about his recent experiences at the hands of the Jaffa, and more importantly, with SG-1.
He struggled to find the right words to explain these humans from Earth to the others of the Reole. It was vital that his people understand the opportunity they were being presented, but there had been nothing but mistrust of outsiders for so long. Secrecy had become almost as natural to his people now as their innate ability to manipulate others' perceptions. It had never even occurred to him to reveal himself when SG-1 had happened upon him, so deeply ingrained was that protective response.
It wasn't until he saw how devoted Colonel O'Neill was to his team, including Lt. Tyler, that he had started to question his assumptions. Watching O'Neill's willingness to put himself in harm's way for a new team member had finally convinced him that he could not take advantage of the Earth man's nature. But O'Neill had stubbornly refused to put himself first, even when Kei'ya'aii revealed his true form. His momentary surprise had quickly morphed into acceptance, and they had worked side by side, trying to hold off the Jaffa.
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Q is for Quantum Mirror (TBFTGOG)
by topazowl
“Quickly, the guy’s hurt! Get a medic, now!” The instructions were issued even as the gate was shutting down. The intonation echoed in Daniel’s ears and he attempted to sit up as he recognised Kawalsky’s voice.
“Charlie?”
Kawalsky turned to stare at Daniel then recognition followed.
“You’re that Doctor who came through the gate recently aren’t you, Doctor Daniel Jackson.”
“Yes! I know you, I knew you in my world. I bring bad news, I’m afraid”
“It’s gone” Kawalsky sighed.
“’Fraid so,” replied Daniel, “but they all died with honour. Now, I’ve got to get to P3R-233 quickly and stop the same thing happening in my world. No, no, leave it.” He finished as a medic tried to inspect his shoulder. Daniel staggered to his feet and attempted to walk to the DHD to dial P3R-233 but the sound of a gun safety’s being removed halted him.
“Why?” Daniel turned round to face Kawalsky with his hands out, palms up.
“Sorry Doc, can’t let you go just yet. Sergeant, dial Earth, see if we can get a connection.” Daniel stood back, understanding this move but needing to get back to the Quantum Mirror and back home before it shut down. Sam had gone for the controller but never got it to him.
“Whilst we try,” said Kawalsky, “I’m sure Colonel Reynolds would like to debrief you. If you’d follow me, Doctor.”
“No, I I ....”
“That’s an order, Sir.”
Daniel acquiesced and made to follow but collapsed in a heap as the pain and shock was getting to him. The medic rushed over, insisting he look at the shoulder.
“Can you fetch Colonel Reynolds?” Daniel asked. “I’ll talk to him here whilst the medic looks at my shoulder.”
At that moment, the dialling failed to engage chevron 7 for earth and Daniel looked beseechingly at Major Kawalsky.
“Or just let me go. Earth has gone, there is nothing you can do. Let me go save my world, please.”
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R is for Resignation (100 Days)
A Time for Change
by traycer_
It took a long time to give into fate and accept the inevitable fact that he was stuck on Edora. Jack fought against it, unwilling to believe that the cavalry, also known as his team, wasn't going to find a way to come charging through the universe to save him.
But fate was a wicked old witch, laughing at his attempts to hang onto his fading faith as he spent his days helping the Edorans rebuild, while mourning his losses along with their own. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and still Jack held on to hope with both hands that maybe one day someone would come.
But now, two months after that fateful day, he stood on the edge of the marsh and stared toward the mountains in the distance, his heart finally resigned to the fact that he was being foolish. No one was coming to the rescue. He knew that now. He was never going to see his home planet again.
He tried to use the others in the community as an excuse for his refusal to give in, but they were finally getting past their anger and accusations that he was the one who took their loved ones away, and were slowly starting to accept him in their fold. It helped, he supposed, that Laira insisted that he was now one of them, not to mention his willingness to help in rebuilding their homes. But their acceptance of him made it hard to hang onto his stubbornness…
Crap, he thought with resignation. What’s the use? He needed to accept the reality of his situation. It had been over two months and no ally ships in site. No one was coming, he realized again. He was well and truly stranded.
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S is for Standing Alone (Fallen)
by eilidh17
Archivist's note: the version on Eilidh's journal (link below) includes illustrations.
The city was old and vast, full of domed structures and towers with twisting spires. The broad streets with ochre-colored earthen walls were covered in a writing that seemed achingly familiar and yet not. Arrom could feel history bleeding out of these buildings - in their crumbling archways, in the long, narrow viaduct that swept overhead into the distance to some point he could not see, and even in the decaying plinths that lined what must have once been a grand thoroughfare, but was now overgrown and deserted.
On a blustery day, wind whistled through the city and danced in her abandoned streets, stirring up dust and plucking leaves from the clutches of withered and dying trees. Khordib believed the city was inhabited by the dead and the sounds they could hear were their voices carried on the wind, but Arrom could hear another voice more clearly - that of Khordib as his attempt at seriousness fell flat.
Arrom asked why they did not live in this city of halls and mud brick houses and unexplored places, but Khordib shook his head and told him that sometimes the ground moved and bricks fell; it was safer to be out in the open and near the fields.
The universe is vast and we are so small.
There was a fear that hid inside Arrom, steeled within his veins like it had always been a part of him, a coldness that lived like a thread threatening to snap with the slightest tension.
He does not yet know his place in this village of welcome strangers. They gave him clothes that matched their own, muted colors that reminded him of the river that runs through the field they found him in, a slice of blue that breaks the landscape but which feeds the people, giving up fish for their tables. Mostly, though, the nomads offered him a home within their camp. Theirs was a measure of trust that was unquestionable, which bothered Arrom more than perhaps it should have, because despite all they had given him he felt awkwardly out of place.
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T is for Tok'ra (Stargate: the Movie)
by roeskva
Garshaw looked up as Martouf entered her office. “What is it, Martouf?”
“We just got a message from our operative at Ra’s court.”
Garshaw sat up straighter. ”That is highly irregular!” She frowned at the young man.
Martouf nodded. “She felt the risk of detection was small compared to the potential importance of the information. Ra is overdue from his most recent trip to Abydos.”
“Overdue? He has probably just decided to spend some time on a pleasure planet on the way back!”
Yosuuf made a mental snort at Garshaw’s comment, tending to agree with her symbiote. However, the operative in question was Jolinar, and while she was certainly prone to unorthodox, even rash behaviour, she was also very experienced and too intelligent to make a dangerous decision without good reason. There might be more to this than just Ra taking off on a whim.
“Quite possible,” Martouf admitted. “Were it not for the fact that he was to meet with Heru’ur, Cronus, and Bastet. He is more than a day late for that meeting, with no explanation. In fact, no one knows where he is. Apparently his guests are now... quite furious.”
“I am not surprised!” Garshaw looked shocked. “Has Ra lost his mind! He risks war with such behaviour. Even a Supreme System Lord cannot ignore his staunchest allies!” She listened to her host, who suggested something might have happened to Ra. “There is no word at all on Ra’s whereabouts?”
“None.” Martouf hesitated, then voiced what both he and Lantash were thinking. “Could something have happened to Ra? Betrayal, perhaps? An attack?”
“Surely no one would dare do that - however much they would like to,” Garshaw said, conviction in her voice. “His allies are too strong, and I also doubt even Sokar would want to risk the chaos that would result, should Ra be killed.”
“Of course.” Martouf nodded, then turned to leave.
“Wait.” Garshaw thought about it for a moment. “Inform the other members of the Council that I wish to meet with them.”
Martouf inclined his head. “Yes, Master Garshaw.” He hurried off to carry out her orders.
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U is for Understanding
Kishotenketsu
by fignewton
Kishotenketsu: a story based on observing how change affects perception, rather than classical conflict plotlines
Jack hauled himself up the last few steps of the ladder and onto the roof. Straightening, he stretched until he felt his spine crack.
As usual, no traffic came through the quiet neighborhood street, allowing him to revel in the silence. He blew out a long, slow breath and watched the vapor dissipate into the chilly air. Everything was normal. Familiar. Ordinary. It was just another night of sharing the stars with his telescope and a bottle of beer, as he'd done every cloudless night for a year now.
Except it wasn't. Nothing was ever going to be the same, was it?
It wasn't the obvious changes in his life that made the difference. Not his retirement from the military, not -
(Charlie)
- not the loss of his son, not the divorce papers he'd found on the table when he'd come home. He'd dealt with that -
(or not dealt with it permanently, as he'd come too close to doing)
- dealt with that in his own way, and once he'd successfully moved past certain... tendencies, Jack was pretty sure he'd reacted more or less as he'd always done.
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U is for Unread
by sallymn
...Or as good as unread. Good. Bad. Whatever.
He stares at the two piles of books by his desk - a little less than clearly, since the glasses he hadn't needed during that glorious burst of alien-enhanced speed reading were hanging from one hand, gently swinging from his fingers. One pile - about twenty of them, all sizes and shapes and threatening unsteadily to topple over - have a post-it note on top, scrawled in his own hand, the writing made even more chicken-scratchy from the excitement he still remembers. Read in one night!
The other pile - about thirty, even more unsteady - have a similar even chicken-scratchier note. To read tomorrow night!! Except that the tomorrow night in question never came.
The Atenik armbands that upgraded the three SG-1 humans so well, that made them so superhuman and so stupidly reckless, that nearly killed them, are gone. And he knows better than to even mention in his General's or his doctor's hearing that he rather wishes they could try again. Just to get all the way through that beckoning, mocking to-read pile...
"S-see the point is... I can read really fast!"
No, he sighs. The point is, with the disastrous descent back into merely-human, he doesn't even remember most of what he read anyway, it had been all surface, no depth. Just as Sam had found the book she wrote - "in two hours!" - was astonishing in quantity and astonishingly absent in quality, and almost blushed her way into an even deeper decline as she deleted it from her hard drive.
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V is for Vaselov (Lockdown)
by gategremlyn
Jack ran his fingers through his hair and cursed the endless piles of paperwork that paraded across his desk. This... this is why he didn't want to be “the man.” He sighed, scrawled his signature, and reached for the next pile. A knock at the door gave him a momentary reprieve. “Come.”
“Hey.” Daniel stood in the doorway in a smart gray suit and tie.
“What do you want?” Jack snapped.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Everybody wants something.” He waved a hand over the mounds of paper.
“Ah, the burdens of command,” Daniel muttered. “And I do have a request, now that you bring it up.”
“Yeah?”
“I'd like to request that people stop zatting me - especially members of my team.”
“Is there a form for that?”
“I'd be willing to create one,” Daniel offered.
“Fine. Create one, fill it out in triplicate, and put it on my desk so I can ignore it.” Jack sighed again. “Is it time?”
“Five minutes,” Daniel said. “I just wanted to know if you were ready.”
“Do I have to say anything?”
“It's all taken care of. You just have to be there.”
“Yeah, okay.” Jack capped the pen and stood up. He shrugged his arms into the jacket of his dress blues, another reason he didn't want to be “the man.”
“Who's delivering the eulogy?”
“Colonel Chekov. He's one of the few people who knows about the program and knew Colonel Vaselov.”
They took the stairs slowly, Jack straightening his tie on the way down. “One of the worst things about the program is that we can't tell the families what happened.”
“I know.”
“The man dies a hero, and the best we can say is 'he died serving his country.' We can't even say he died saving the whole damn world.”
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W is for Wordless (The Quest)
by obsessivemuch1
As the blue-tinted glow faded, Baal noted two things. The first was the rather obvious fact he, and SG-1, had been transported to another part of the cave system. The second, was that the Orici had not. He was unsure what to feel about that - Adria had been a complication he'd not made allowance for. On the other hand, something within the cave had tempered her abilities. He'd lost whatever chance there'd been to remove her from the equation altogether.
And now what? Were they truly closer to finding the Sangreal? The chamber Baal found himself in appeared to be a roughly hewn laboratory of sorts. The way Jackson had harped on about Merlin, he'd expected something more... grand. Not this dank, dark cavern untouched for centuries.
The old man unconscious on the table didn't allay Baal's misgivings either. He, and the Repository that Vala Mal Doran had activated, were the only things of note in the chamber. Ancient or not, Merlin was not someone Baal wished to interact with. He'd had his fill with Anubis, and were not the Ori enough evidence that no being should have such power? The Goa'uld had hardly covered themselves in glory, of that he was painfully aware, but their godhood had been more smoke and mirrors. The Ori, and by extension the Ancients, were truly a risk.
Baal eyed the Repository. It was frustrating to know the device held so much knowledge when his physiology was no more compatible than that of O'Neill. What a disgusting thought.
Dragged along with Carter's investigation of the cave system, it proved that the transporter had moved them further than Baal had originally thought. Gone were the rolling green fields. Now a barren desert stretched around them. The Stargate sat at a slight distance, with the obelisk beyond. He was impressed - the idea of beaming people through an open wormhole had never occurred to him. It was indeed an effective way to hide something.
Or it was until the person seeking had all the knowledge of the Ancients and could mentally manipulate the DHD.
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X is for Unknown (1969)
by sg_fignewton
X: Denoting an unknown or unspecified person or thing. -- Oxford Dictionary
Daniel, leaning over Sam's shoulder, stabbed a finger at a name on the screen. "There! What about him?"
"What?" Sam frowned at the screen, disconcerted, then looked up at him.
"Michael Joseph Blassie, the Vietnam unknown in Arlington Cemetery that they finally identified last year. They reburied him in a military cemetery in Missouri, didn't they? Maybe that's our Michael."
"No," Jack said flatly.
"No?"
"No."
Daniel looked at him sideways. "Why not?"
"It's too pat. Even for time travel." Jack's grimace showed how much he enjoyed the need to make such a qualification.
"But the name..."
"There are lots of people named 'Michael' in the world, Daniel," Sam said, her voice cool as she turned back to her database search. "I know the timing seems right to you, but that doesn't mean Michael was First Lieutenant Blassie."
"Besides," Jack added, slouching back in his chair, "Blassie was a graduate of the Air Force Academy, not a long-haired Woodstock wannabe."
Daniel opened his mouth to protest the insult to the young idealist who had helped them, but stopped when a gentle hand closed over his arm.
"Daniel Jackson," Teal'c said quietly, "I am certain that O'Neill and Captain Carter believe you should abandon this theory."
Daniel looked at Teal'c's still expression, so unreadable to those who didn't know him and so rich in nuance to his friends and teammates. The faint tilt of his head, the slight droop of his eyelids, it all but screamed at Daniel: Stop.
He frowned, replaying the last moments in his mind. Then his eyes widened. Oh.
This wasn't a question of civilian versus military thinking, he realized, although Daniel always had to keep that factor in mind. He knew he was a product of academia, of the Oriental Institute in Chicago and UCLA, and he often had to force himself to stop and determine whether his resistance to a military decision was based on a genuine objection or was simply a knee-jerk reaction of protest. This time, he recognized that he'd allowed his scientific curiosity to steamroller over any other sensibilities. For Jack and Sam, reducing the identified unknown of Vietnam to their long-haired friend was just short of sacrilegious. Daniel took a deliberate mental step backwards, acknowledging that this was a matter of respect.
He gave Teal'c the tiniest of nods - message received - and turned back to focus on Sam's search.
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Y is for Yearning (FIAD)
by dennydj
He woke disoriented, still tethered to the realm of dreams. Soft light filtered through the slats of the window blind, enough to discern the familiar furnishings of his bedroom.
Instinctively, he reached out, his hand searching for the body that should be lying next to him, the one that had been there only hours before. But the space next to him was empty and cold, the warmth of his dream dissipating as his mind became grounded in the present.
Sha’re was gone. Irrevocably lost. She had never lain next to him in this bed, in this house, and never would. But he could still feel the ghost of her touch as her fingers gently stroked his face. Could still smell vanilla and sandalwood mixed with something that was uniquely Sha’re.
She had been here - but she hadn’t.
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut as though it would allow him to draw her back from wherever she’d gone. Seconds and minutes passed, the light intensifying behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes, finding the room transformed by daylight, the shadows banished along with his dreams.
The jarring buzz of the phone severed the last thread tethering him to his dream world.
“Hello?”
“Daniel - briefing in forty-five minutes!”
“Hello to you, too, Jack.”
“Are you still in bed?”
“No, I’m in the shower.”
“Funny. Get your butt in gear.”
They were scheduled to go off-world tomorrow. For some reason, he was having trouble getting excited about the prospect. He’d never find the one thing he’d always searched for. No matter how many ruins they explored or new cultures they met, they would never take the place of that ‘one thing’.
“Daniel?” He’d taken too long to answer and now he had to deal with ‘concerned Jack’.
“I’ll be there; don’t worry.”
“Tick tock, Daniel.”
He hung up the phone and lay staring at the ceiling. He reached out, once again finding the space next to him cold and empty.
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Z is for Zebras (Legacy)
by sidlj
They drill it into you in medical school. The most likely explanation for whatever symptoms a patient presents with, is the most likely explanation. 'Think horses.' Daniel's diagnosis was clear-cut. Migraines, hallucinations, increased dopamine levels... Everything added together pointed in one direction. I called in Doctor MacKenzie. He agreed with my conclusions.
Schizophrenia.
We put Daniel away. Committed him, medicated him, stopped listening to him. The only thing that saved Daniel in the end was Machello's device transferring itself into Teal'c.
Teal'c inadvertently saved Daniel's sanity and ended up nearly losing his own life. Daniel saved Teal'c by telling us what we should be looking for.
What I learned in medical school had been of no use to anyone up to that point. My sole worthwhile contribution in the entire process was ultimately the idea to use the centrifuge to make an injection of Sam's blood safe for the rest of us. Everything else I did or said was either useless or harmful.
'First do no harm' is the other thing they drill into you in med school.
I failed Daniel in every way.
I am the chief medical officer of a command that has the word 'Stargate' in its title. Why did I assume that the mundane answer would be the right one, when my patients travel for a living to other planets?
God help me, from now on, when I hear hoofbeats, I am going to think zebras.
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