#4 in the Life's Little Problems Series
Color Outside the Lines
A Little!Danny fic by: Maj. Cliffhanger
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Part 24
Cam frowned at the sight of birds circling overhead; step two in nature's
clean up crew. Flies and insects would have already started the
process. Scavengers and carnivores wouldn't be far behind. The litter
of bodies was a looming danger they'd have to deal with soon....
He glanced over at McKenzie as the SG-12 medic checked Haikon's vitals
yet again. A shake of the younger man's head indicated no change.
Under the circumstances, Cam didn't know if that was good or bad.
Twisting his wrist, he frowned down at his watch. Conway and Stevens should
just about be reaching the obelisk again. Another ten minutes or so
to the gate, fifteen to thirty minutes to get the med teams organized
and through, twenty more to make it back here--
The sound of approaching steps had him jerking his weapon up, but it was
just Teal'c and Hadden returning.
"We were unable to locate any other survivors," Teal'c informed them
solemnly. His gaze dropped to Hiakon even as he squatted down beside
Cam and lowered his voice. "What is his condition?"
"Same," Cam answered grimly. It was probably too soon to tell if the tretonin
was going to take and, even if it did, his injuries were pretty bad.
Without a symbiote....
It was Haikon who interrupted his musings. All four SGC men held their
breath in surprise as the injured man offered a groan and tried to
mumble something.
"Haikon?" Cam leaned close, hoping this was a good sign and that the man would
be able to tell them what the hell had happened. "Haikon!"
he called again.
Dark eyes clouded with pain and shock blinked up at them uncertainly.
Teal'c reached out to grip the Sodan's forearm. "Fear not,
Brother," he quickly assured him. "You are among friends."
"Teal'c?" the injured man managed to gasp even as his gaze slipped over to Cam.
"Mitchell...." Uncertainly was replaced with pain and fear.
He forced himself to continue despite the obvious cost. "Save
yourselves," he warned them. "You shouldn't be here!"
Cam ignored the warning. "What happened?" he demanded instead,
squeezing the other man's shoulder and willing strength into him.
"Tell us who did this?"
Haikon collapsed back onto his pallet with a grimace. "Volnek..."
he sighed in obvious anguish.
Maj. Hadden frowned in shocked disbelief. "One man did this?"
Teal'c didn't question it. "Why would he turn on his people?" he
asked urgently. Beneath his hand, Cam felt the Sodan leader suddenly
relax again. "Tell me, Haikon.... Haikon!"
McKenzie's hand was at the Sodan's neck. He sat back after a long moment with a
nod, letting them know Haikon was still alive, just unconscious.
Sudden static and a shout over their radios had everyone reaching for their
handsets. "Alpha Baker to Sierra Golf One Two-niner, come in,
over!"
Cam had heard the distinctive sound of staff weapon's fire intermingled
with P-90 action over the dire tones before he keyed his mike. "Go
ahead, over?" he ordered curtly even as the major turned to
McKenzie and pointed at Haikon.
"Stay here!"
"--Under attack!" came the urgent response. "I say again; we are
under attack! Requesting immediate backup, over!"
The three were already on their feet and moving. "State your
position, over!"
"At the Eye of the--" The sound of a staff blast that was far too
close interrupted him. There was a grunt, a bang ... and then static.
"Conway, report!" Hadden's order was sharp and demanding, but got no
answer. "Stevens, come in, over?"
Still nothing.
With Teal'c leading the way, the three of them set off at a brisk pace,
weapons ready and fingers itchy. Apparently the men had walked into
an ambush. Cam had respected Volnek – and dared to call his
brother, Jolan, a friend; but if he were responsible for this....
All Cam could do was pray the men they'd sent for help would still be
alive when they got there.
* * *
"...So now, he looks five, but his DNA is still--" Sam stopped and
frowned pensively. It was obvious she'd lost the kid. She had to try
again. "Okay. DNA, or Deoxyribonucleic Acid, is kind of like a
set of blue prints. Do you know what that is?"
Daniel let out a frustrated sigh. "--Sam!" he interrupted her.
She winced. Unfortunately, what had happened to him was complicated –
and she didn't know an uncomplicated way to explain it!
Jason turned to Danny, still frowning. "You're ... old?" he
asked, trying to summarize what little he'd been able to glean from
Sam's rambling explanation. She blinked, frankly surprised he'd been
able to understand that much!
"No," Danny corrected his friend and shot Sam a look to keep her from
'correcting' him. "I used to be," he continued, turning
back to Jason. "I used to be as old as she is." He again
glanced at Sam. "Older?" He frowned, uncertainly.
She nodded, not sure where he was going with this but deciding maybe he'd
have more luck explaining it than she'd had. "A couple of
years," she admitted.
"Wow," he offered, his eyes getting big. "I was ancient!"
What? "Hey!" Sam exclaimed in protest. Did he mean--? He couldn't
mean....
Both Danny and Jason giggled, and Sam rolled her eyes.
The little imp!
* * *
Danny turned back to Jason. "I used to be," he repeated,
returning to the problem at hand. "Part of me is still old, I
guess, but most of me...." He sighed explosively. "It's
like I went to sleep in Egypt in 1970 and only woke up a couple of
weeks ago. I mean, I got all these other memories in my head of what
it was like when my parents died and stuff that happened 'after'..."
He offered the word in air quotes. "But some of it – a lot of
it – is like it happened to someone else. Like it's something I
read in a book or saw in a movie, and it's all jumbled up and
confused. Especially the older stuff – more recent stuff. The older
I was when something happened, the harder it is for me to remember. I
don't remember getting older, and I don't remember learning a lot of
the stuff that I seem to know, like other languages and stuff. I know
what I do remember is real and I know it's me, but...." He
shrugged, not knowing how else to explain it.
"That's how you knew all about Ba'al and everything," Jason decided.
"And how to light a fire without matches."
Danny cringed and glanced away, swallowing around a tight throat as he
nodded. Jason must think he was some kind of freak – and he was, he
knew. All the kids at the schools he'd gone to here in the States had
certainly thought so, and he hadn't even been shrunk then.
"You're Dr. Jackson!" Jason continued, pointing at Danny in sudden
realization. "When they called our names out over the speakers
here, they asked for us," he indicated himself and Sam, "and
'Dr. Jackson.' ...Oh! And then when we were first kidnapped by Ba'al,
he called you Dr. Jackson too! I thought it was weird and almost
forgot about it. He knows you've been shrunk and that's why he wanted
to kidnap you, isn't it?"
Danny sighed, staring down at the floor. "Yeah..." Why couldn't
he ever have any friends his own age, except when he was big? He
glanced up at Sam sadly. He knew she was his friend and he really
liked her – but it wasn't the same.
"He wasn't really trying to help you, was he? He just wanted to know how
it happened so he could do it too, to his enemies or something."
Danny frowned. That wasn't a possibility he'd thought of. "Maybe...."
Jason glanced up at Sam. "Can you fix it?" he asked.
* * *
Danny stared down at his feet again and Sam found herself squatting down
beside him, reaching out to draw him close as she was unable to
ignore his silent suffering. "We're trying to," she
answered for him, offering Danny a comforting hug.
"So," Jason was still frowning, "you could be stuck like this? You'd
stay five forever?"
Danny quickly shook his head but still didn't look up.
"No, Jason," Sam answered for him again, smoothing a hand over the
younger boy's down-turned head and wishing she could take all his
fears and pain away. "If for some reason, we can't fix this –
and we're trying really, really hard to do just that! - but if we
can't, Danny will grow up again just like you."
"Oh." Jason chewed his lip and studied Danny for a long moment as he tried
to process everything. He glanced back at Sam. "What if he
doesn't want to get old again?"
She blinked in surprise.
"I gotta get old again," Danny answered, looking up at last but not
sounding nearly as happy about it as Sam would have liked. "I
learned stuff when I was older that they need, stuff that I don't
remember very well now. And if I don't remember, then the Ori could
attack and we might not be ready."
Sam frowned as she clasped his small shoulder and turned him to face her.
"Danny?" she asked, realizing this was a question they'd
never thought to ask before. "Are you saying you don't want us
to fix this? That if you had a choice, you'd rather stay five?"
He sighed and Sam saw far too much wisdom in that too young face. "I
don't have a choice," he answered simply.
Not the answer she wanted. "What if we gave you one?" she
insisted. Oh god, what was she saying? There were any number of
people who'd probably argue he was too young and confused to know
what he wanted!
Danny offered her a tired smile and laid a small hand on her shoulder.
"It's okay, Sam," he told her. "I know I'm not the
last hope for mankind or anything stupid like that, but I also know
that what I used to know is important. I need to be old again so I
can help."
Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no! She was not going to let him sacrifice his own
happiness again for the sake of everyone else just because he thought
that's what he had to do! "Danny--"
"--Sam." He saw the protest in her eyes before she even voiced it and
interrupted. "It's okay," he insisted. He turned back to
Jason with a little shrug. "Being old isn't all bad," he
told the other kid. "In fact, a lot of it's kinda fun. You get
to do a bunch of stuff your parents would never let you get away with
when you're young."
"Like stay up past ten o'clock?" Jason asked, trying to think of
things he'd like to do if he were 'old.'
Danny grinned. "And drive a car and drink beer and--"
"--Not at the same time!" Sam felt compelled to interjected.
The boys laughed. "Drinking and driving's stupid," Jason agreed
but turned back to Danny with a sudden frown. "What happens when
you get old again?" he asked. "Will you remember any of
this?"
Danny shrugged. "Why not?" he asked.
Sam winced as he and Jason looked to her for a definitive answer. "I
... suppose you would," she finally decided. "The memory
will have been stored in your frontal cortex, but the synapses will
have been reconfigured into the adult patterns again."
They were both frowning. Okay, Danny might have understood that but Jason
clearly hadn't.
"It would basically be the same sort of thing that's going on with his
memory now," she explained. "The memories will be there,
but they might be a little confused."
Jason suddenly looked worried. "He might not remember me at all then?"
The thought obviously upset him.
"No!" Both Sam and Danny were quick to reassure him, if for two very
different reasons.
"I could never forget you!" Danny claimed.
"The memories will definitely be there, Jason," Sam hurried to add,
crossing her fingers behind her back at the half-lie. She was
promising something no one could really know for certain at this
point. "They might be a little mixed up, especially at first;
but he'll remember you. I'm sure of it."
The reassurance didn't last long as the boy offered Danny a sad look and
glanced down. "But you won't want to be my friend any more when
you're old," he decided.
"Why not?" Danny asked, obviously distressed at the idea himself. "I
was friends with Cassie before. She's a girl we met on another planet
who came to live here after the g'oold destroyed--"
"--Danny!" Sam sighed in exasperation as the boy stepped over the 'need to know'
line yet again.
He shot her only a glance. "Sorry," and turned immediately
back to Jason. "She was only 12 when we rescued her. And she was
my friend when I was old."
"But I'm six," Jason argued.
"So?" Danny rejoined. "She's a girl!"
Sam laughed. She couldn't help it. Danny referred to Cassie being a girl
the same way he might refer to cooties! "Hey, I'm a girl!"
she teased him.
"You're different," he claimed.
Of course she was. She grinned.
"Did you ever kiss a girl when you were older?" Jason asked. His
expression clearly reflected what he thought about that endeavor!
"I was married!" Danny revealed in overly-dramatic tones.
"Ewwww!"
"Okay, that's enough, you two!" Sam decided, practically kicking
herself to keep from doubling-over with laughter. She had no idea
what Jason did or didn't know about being 'married' but, after that
reaction, decided she didn't want to! She and Danny were going to
have to have a long talk later when Jason wasn't around - about what
Danny really wanted, as well as appropriate conversational topics for
a six year old! "Why don't we concentrate on finding those
lead-lined vests the infirmary has and freaking out some SFs,"
she suggested with a grin.
As hoped, the previous line of discussion was immediately forgotten.
"Yeah!" the boys shouted together in mischievous
anticipation, then grabbed her hands and tugged her through the
closed door of her lab.