trans_9 | A Mini-Midlife Crisis

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A Mini-Midlife Crisis

Where to start? He had to resist the urge to pick at the little square bandage on his forehead or the stitches. Daniel put his hands on his hips, where they couldn't get anywhere near his head, and surveyed what was going to temporarily be his domain. Until he got kicked out, at least, but until then, he was determined to squat here. As makeshift archaeology labs went, he'd worked with less. It was a lot to take in; there were an impressive amount of artifacts from the dig. They probably didn't even scratch the surface of Taleen, but they'd brought back a lot anyway. The room was crowded. Practically overflowing. An archaeologist's wet dream. Maybe not Meaning of Life Stuff, but this could keep a person occupied for months. Maybe years, depending on how thoroughly you wanted to go into it.

Daniel didn't make any motion to begin on any of them. He sat down and looked at the tables.

What the hell was he even doing here? Once the excitement and rush wore off, Daniel realized how inappropriate this was. Talk about a lack of priorities. The fact that he was still thrilled about the prospect of spending a day studying them angered him at the same time as it excited him. Sha're was out there, still a host. Or maybe not, if his universe really had been destroyed. Daniel had a hard time wrapping his head around the concept. Part of him still didn't believe it was true. He wanted proof. Something besides Stacy and the Daligig's word. At the same time, having actual proof only meant that what felt like a terrible possibility became cold, hard fact. Maybe he didn't want to know. It was easier on his sanity if he could wonder if SG-1 was out there still.

And here he was, about to get arm deep in relics and a dead civilization. Like it had any bearing on what was supposed to be the most important thing. He should be trying to get back home or - or do something to help everything and everyone he ever cared about.

Sure thing, as soon as he found some good options. So far, Daniel didn't see anything better than staying on this ship. Even if he found a Stargate, it wasn't like he could abandon ship. It wasn't a matter of attachment but practicality. Where would he go? No point of origin, or maybe they were different, and even if he went back to this Earth, nothing was quite the same. It wasn't his universe. He was better off sticking with Stacy, Daniel had to admit to himself. Everything seemed to converge on her. If anything was going to come up that would help, it would more likely happen around her. That left him doing missions while he was on board, working. Maybe they'd find something on one planet, something that could helped his universe. Even with the destruction of Thor's Hammer, he had a chance to find something to help Sha're.

Daniel took a breath. He stood up. He could make himself useful until the next mission. He had a few things he wanted to study first. The mummy they brought back lay on the table. He was dying to start on it. Or there were the Goa'uld devices.

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Daniel looked down at the otter. It almost coiled possessively around his legs, as if to say, this was its food factory, stay away. He looked up to find Marco glaring at the otter, as if to say, bring it. Maybe he should step out from between them and let them at it. He was feeling a little like a car stuck before an oncoming train. Two of them. The otter's beady eyes tilted up at him and Daniel muttered another warning, 'Menkaure' at it.

"It's just an animal. It can't be evil," Daniel said. He cocked his head. There was a certain familiarity to the kid. Like he saw him before. Or someone who looked a lot like him.

The boots jogged his memory. The last time he saw him, he'd been about six, had commandeered his boots, and asked him question after question. Like why he studied old people.

"You're Marco?" Daniel blurted out.

Well it was Daniel's own fault for deciding to take on an insane rodent that for some stupid reason had decided that attacking Marco was it's life ambition on as a pet in the first place. If Daniel had just gotten a normal pet he wouldn't have this problem. In fact, if someone had just done the sensible thing and thrown the goddamn creature out of an airlock, everyone would be infinitely better off.

Okay, so mainly Marco would be better off. But that didn't change the fact that the otter was insane. "That one is evil," Marco said, folding his arms and glaring at it. "And it is most definitely completely insane."

Okay, so Marco had kinda been in the middle of the 'why' stage back when he'd met Daniel the first time. Being six years old would do that to you, although generally Marco was trying to forget much of what it was like being six again. "Yes, I'm Marco," he said, rolling his eyes a little. "What, were you expecting me to still be three feet high?"

It wasn't like he had a choice. Daniel got adopted by it. And once he had Menkaure following him around, and making those pitiful starving sounds, Daniel's resolve toppled like the Lighthouse of Alexandria, if you replaced the earthquakes with the pitiful otter face Menkaure kept giving him.

Although it was probably better if the otter went somewhere else, before there was a fight on his hands. He just hoped he could get the otter to leave. Daniel gently nudged it with his heel. It didn't notice him the first time. Daniel did it again, a very gentle but insistent pressure.This time it looked up, and then got up and slunk off.

"Maybe you smell-" it was on the tip of his tongue to say 'bad'. Daniel narrowly averted the disaster by hastily changing the last part of the sentence. "like something otters don't like."

It was weird looking at Marco. One second he was six, now he was a teenager. Maybe ti wasn't that weird, Jack had aged quickly on Argos because of Pelops' nanomachines, but that was different. He remembered everything. Marco had literally gone backwards. So this was Eva's son as he was supposed to be.

He could see the family resemblance. Starting with the sarcasm.

"Sorry. I think I got used to you when you were six." Probably not the best thing to say. He didn't seem to remember him completely, just the boots. The archaeologist held out a hand. "Daniel Jackson."

Edited 2011-10-04 05:33 (UTC)

Marco eyed the otter as it slunk off. He could almost swear that the stupid thing looked around at him to give him one last victorious look too, as if it wanted to rub in the fact that it had managed to try to bite off his leg and got away with it.

Stupid otter. "It smells," Marco retorted. Okay, so that comeback was totally lame. But it was still true.

If Daniel thought all that deaging stuff was weird, he should have seen what it was like from Marco's point of view. Not to mention the fact that he'd lost three years in the process.

Marco was still seriously ticked off about that.

"Kids these days. We grow up so fast," Marco said, taking Daniel's hand. Right - Daniel. That was the guy's name. He probably should have remembered that. He glanced down at the mummy, and grinned. "Looks like you've got something you wanna keep under wraps."

Even if the mummy hadn't been wrapped like the Egyptian practice, actually, he wasn't quite sure what this race's views on the afterlife were, Daniel guessed he had it coming. Mummy jokes were somehow less funny when it wasn't out of the mouths of coffee-deprived or work overloaded Egyptologists. At least he was taking the body well. Then again, maybe Daniel shouldn't be surprised. From what Eva told him, her son had fought in a war as a child soldier. A little thing like a mummy was the least of his worries.

Daniel handed him goggles, gloves and a mask, and motioned for him to come on in. How was Eva doing?

"Mind your step. So what have you been up to?"

Hey, as far as Marco was concerned, when you were standing next to one of them, mummu jokes were always funny. Clearly Daniel just needed a better sense of humour.

As for the mummy itself, Marco didn't even think to be disturbed by it. It was just dead, and Marco had seen plenty of dead bodies before. This one wasn't even recently dead, or one Marco had killed himself. They tended to be way more gruesome.

Marco took the goggles and stuff, raising an eyebrow at them. Seriously? The guy wanted him to wear googles? Marco wasn't going to bother with that, so he didn't put on any of them, instead dumping them on the nearest flat surface after he walked in.

To Daniel's question, Marco shrugged. "Not much. Running around in mazes, getting attacked by crazy otters - you know, the usual," he said, keeping things vague. Daniel might be a friend of his Mom's, but that didn't mean Marco trusted him. Or wanted to bring up anything about how his mother had been in the brig recently.

"Sounds like a busy schedule." Yeah, the usual. Eva mentioned something about a maze. Something something GLADOS. "By the way, I'd rather you didn't hurt Menkaure. He might not like you but he's an animal."

Daniel led the way further in when he heard a clattering sound. He turned, and found Marco had discarded the safety gear, like he'd handed him a hand out and not something for his own good. Okay, maybe Daniel wasn't as uptight as some of the professors he knew, but this was his lab until someone said otherwise, and safety did come first. He suddenly turned. Daniel might not have the same intimidating presence as Teal'c or Jack, but he made up for it by being a pain in the ass.

"Marco. I don't want to be a spoil sport, but you need to put those on before you come in. You can either follow the lab rules or you can go back home."

"Yeah, and animals can't be vicious or violent at all," Marco said, just a little darkly. He'd been into plenty of animals to know what they were capable, and what kind of minds they could have. And animal or not, all of nature was built on the principle of kill or be killed.

Maybe if Daniel had been more intimidating, Marco would have just accepted his authority. But Marco had spent a lot of his teens having to ignore the authority of adults; first his father (who wasn't capable of taking care of himself, let alone Marco), and then everyone else, because none of the adults knew about the Yeerk one - and the ones that did were the enemy. Which meant that he wasn't particularly inclined to follow the 'adults know best' philosophy.

"You forgot to mention these 'lab rules' in the first place," he said cooly. "And unlike some people, I don't have any interest in poking at dead people. Only reason I'm in here is because I was trying to get away from your crazy little pet. Funny, you don't seem to have a problem with it running around here."

"It's generally the standard for most labs," Daniel retorted. Anyone would know that. "It's not my pet." It just happens to follow me around when it feels like it, he thought. It was probably the other way around. He'd been adopted, or at least, it seemed to regard him as moderately decent. Being a food source didn't hurt things.

And if so, the otter wasn't at eye level to get hit by something. If Marco knew something about animals, more than the average person, then Daniel didn't think he needed to point out that they had better reflexes and instincts than humans. The chances were something would hit either of them and the otter would belong gone.

Daniel walked back over and retrieved the discarded safety gear. He held them out to Marco. "Fine. I'm not forcing you to stay. But if you do want to remain here, you wear these. I'm not having anyone injured in my lab."

"Yes, because the standard totally applies when we're on a living transdimensional spaceship that thinks it's our mother," Marco said, rolling his eyes. "And the otter's not your pet. It's just a coincidence that you named it and let it scurry around your workplace."

Really, Marco would just be wondering what the hell flying objects were doing in an archaeology lab. What were these guys doing, playing volley ball with the artifacts?

Ironic though, in a weird way, that he was so worried about Marco being injured. Fact was, with morphing able to heal all injuries Marco stood a better chance than anyone at not getting long lasting injuries. Not that Marco would mention that. "Keep em. Besides, I wouldn't want to get in the way of you and your girlfriend," Marco said, smirking and stepping backwards, heading for the exit. Hey, archaeology definitely wasn't his thing. Why go to a lot of fuss just to look at some ancient junk?

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A Mini-Midlife Crisis

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