Title: Emotional Archaeology
Fandom: Stargate SG-1
Rating: Gen, All ages
Length: 1,600 words approx
Content notes: n/a
Author notes: Challenge - Bounce.
Summary: Coda to Show and Tell - Jack thinks he wants to be alone. Daniel does not agree.



The guest quarters’ door stood partly open, and Daniel could hear an odd thumping sound from within. A rhythm: a heavy thump followed by two smaller ones and then a different sound, a little like a smack. A pause, then the same thing again. And again.

Curious, Daniel approached the door. Thump. Thump-thump. Smack. Thump. Thump-thump. Smack.

He pushed the door open. The lights were out, but he made out the figure of a man lying on the bed, but the wrong way around, with his feet at the pillow end. As Daniel’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, the man’s arm moved and that sound came again. Thump. Thump-thump. Smack.

“Jack?”

Thump. Thump-thump. Smack.

Jack was throwing a ball at one corner of the room. It hit the ceiling, bounced to the wall, then to the wall on the other side of the corner, and finally back to Jack’s hand. He must have been doing it for a long time to have his aim so perfect the ball boomeranged to him every time.

Thump. Thump-thump. Smack.

“Jack? What’s going on?” Daniel reached for the light switch, flicked it on and closed the door behind him.

“I’m thinking,” Jack said, and tossed the ball again. Thump. Thump-thump. Smack.

Daniel watched him for two more tosses. “Are you feeling okay?”

Thump. Thump-thump. Jack caught the ball. Smack. He let his head fall back so he was looking at Daniel upside down. “I’m just great,” he said sarcastically.

Daniel looked pointedly at the corner. “Did the wall do something wrong?”

“Oh, for crying out loud!” Jack muttered. He sat up, turned and threw the ball at Daniel.

Daniel caught it. “Okay then. So, what’s going on?” He thought he knew, but in this place, with Jack, it was best to be sure.

Jack gave a theatrically heavy sigh, sat up and swivelled around so he was facing Daniel, the right way up now. “Not really in here for a pep talk, Daniel.”

Jack’s hair was mussed, and his BDUs wrinkled as if he’d been sleeping. Daniel didn’t think he had been sleeping.

Daniel leaned back against the door. “Charlie?” he hazarded. Not Jack’s son, but the strange, alien child who had bonded with Jack and taken that name. A cruel thing to do to Jack, though the kid hadn’t known it.

“Yeah,” Jack admitted. “And other stuff.”

The army of invisible aliens out to destroy human life in the galaxy? Yeah, that was on Daniel’s mind, too. But there was nothing at all he could do about the Reetou and he didn’t think Jack was bouncing a ball off the walls while he figured out tactical solutions. No, he was gnawing on something else.

Getting Jack to open up was like uncovering something fragile that had been buried for thousands of years. You had to go layer by layer, slow and careful, and know when to back the hell off if a crack appeared. Usually, Daniel would offer beer, or pull out a chess board. They would sit in silence, or argue about irrelevant crap and – eventually – Jack would say something about what was really on his mind. That wasn’t going to work in here.

That was okay. As Jack always said, you work with what you have. Daniel had staked out his ground, so to speak. Now he needed to carefully brush away the loose soil until he found the artefact beneath.

The ball, brightly coloured rubber about the size of a racquet ball, was warm in Daniel’s hand. He walked to the bed, sat down and threw the ball, aiming for the floor about where he had been standing.

The ball bounced off the floor, hit the wall and bounced again, flying over his head. Daniel threw up an arm to catch it, but the bounce was higher than he’d anticipated. He ended up falling backward onto the bed while the ball sailed past, hit the wall behind him and bounced back toward him.

Jack caught it. “Takes practice,” he said, tossing the ball as Daniel had done, while Daniel scrambled back into a sitting position and righted his glasses.

For Jack, the ball bounced right back to where he sat, and he caught it deftly. Thump-thump-smack. Then threw again.

Daniel caught it.

“Hey!” Jack protested.

Daniel dropped the ball between his feet, judging the bounce. It was more powerful than he’d assumed. He tried for the wall again, with a bit less force in his throw. The ball hit the floor, bounced to the wall, bounced back to him. Still a bit high, but this time he caught it. Grinned at Jack. Threw it again, making a slight adjustment so it would bounce back to the man beside him instead of Daniel’s hand.

Jack caught it and tossed the ball for Daniel to catch. “Not bad, Danny. Didn’t know you were a pitcher.”

Daniel shrugged. “I wasn’t. But I spent a lot of time playing on my own.” He threw again.

They bounced it back and forth for a while, exchanging grins to mark successes and friendly insults when one of them missed a catch. Just a couple of grown men pretending to be kids.

Finally, Jack said, “He was scared.” He threw the ball a bit harder.

Daniel caught it. “He was brave,” he answered.

“Yeah, but I mean, he was terrified when he first saw Teal’c.”

Daniel bounced the ball back to him. “He recognised him as Jaffa. And he had good reason to be scared of them. But you told him Teal’c was okay. He trusted you. He calmed down.”

“And the Goa’uld.”

“They’re pretty scary, Jack. Charlie was very young.”

Bounce. “He’s not gonna understand.”

Catch. “Understand what?” Daniel knew. Of course he knew.

“Everything. That the Tok’Ra are different. That we were trying to help him. That I…” He threw the ball, hard.

It hit the floor, the wall, and ricocheted over their heads. Daniel made no attempt to catch it.

“That you did what you had to do. That he was going to die, otherwise.”

Jack shook his head. “No. That part, he knew. He was dying. He knew that.”

The ball continued to bounce along the floor and finally pattered to a stop. Jack collected it and returned to the bed.

“You made the right call, Jack,” Daniel said, but Jack knew that.

Jack made the only call he could to save the strange, alien child. Charlie had been genetically altered so he could interact with the Reetou, and artificially aged so he could communicate with humans. It wasn’t clear how old he really was: much younger than he appeared, surely, and he’d looked about ten. So young, yet his body was failing, the unintended side-effect of the genetic modification. Daniel had seen Fraiser’s face when she examined his scans. There was nothing she could do for the boy.

But the Tok’Ra could heal him.

“Did I?” Jack studied the ball in his hand, not looking at Daniel.

“Would it have been better to let him die?”

“He’s a kid, Daniel. He grew up in a lab. He never got to play catch or ride a bike or anything!”

If he stayed, he wouldn’t have done any of those things. He would have died, underground. Daniel wasn’t sure if Jack was angry at the circumstances or if there was more to this. If Jack was second-guessing the decision to let the Tok’Ra take him…well, no one had been certain about the wisdom of that. Charlie was too young to give informed consent to becoming a host, and Jack was right: he would be terribly afraid of that.

But if it saved him…

Daniel nodded, silent, listening.

“He named himself after my son. He wanted to stay with me.”

And there it was.

Jack threw the ball against the wall. Daniel caught it. Suddenly he saw the alternative as Jack must have seen it. Let Charlie stay in the infirmary. Let him pretend, just a bit longer, that he was Jack’s son. Jack would have stayed with him. He would have sat by his side and talked for as long as Charlie could listen. Held his hand when he hurt. Held him close while he breathed his last.

It would have been beyond cruel to put Jack through that. Daniel wasn’t at all sure Jack could survive it.

And Jack knew it. He wasn’t questioning the decision. He was questioning his motive.

Topsoil all gone. He could see the shape of the artefact, but now he had to be so very careful. Small tools, delicate work to recover the thing without breaking.

They weren’t going to sort through this one by tossing a ball around. Daniel pocketed the ball and stood up. “Come on.”

Jack didn’t move.

“Jack. You need to get out of here.”

“And do what?”

“First, we’re going to eat. I’m starving.” That was a lie, but Jack was more likely to cooperate if he thought he was doing Daniel a favour, and since he was likely to end the night with a lot of alcohol, Daniel wanted to make sure he had a good meal first.

“Then,” Daniel continued, “we’re going out to the baseball field. You can pitch ’till you drop.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. He shrugged. “Surprisingly, that sounds good.”

“And if that doesn’t help, I’ve got a bottle of single malt I was saving for Christmas,” Daniel added with a grin.

Jack stood. Ran a hand through his hair, mussing it even worse than before. Patted Daniel’s shoulder. Managed a smile. “That’s my boy. Last one to the locker room is buying.”

Jack was through the door ahead of him.

End note:
“The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed, for the wrong reason.”
It’s a quote from Murder in the Cathedral. The line resonated strongly with me when I studied the play in school (probably the only part of it that did), and it still comes back to me a lot. I don’t suppose either Jack or Daniel reads TS Elliot, but I think they would both understand it.