chapter 5
"Crap?" Jack frowned. "Why ‘crap‘? That sounded like a specific ‘crap‘. Not a general all-purpose ‘crap‘."
That comment had Daniel staring at Jack as if he’d lost his mind. Teal’c’s eyebrow raised fractionally.
Xander bit down the bubbling panic. What could he say? I’m here magically from another dimension and everything about me in this dimension is faked up with mojo? Including my parents’ lives and Daniel remembering them from when he was little? Oh yeah, sure. That would go over. Daniel would just be thrilled his mind was messed with by demonic magic from another dimension. Jack would go ballistic. Sam would…well she would probably go all Wills or Fred-like and start babbling about quantum theories or whatever. Teal’c would raise his eyebrow all the way up and stare. And that was best-case scenario, if they believed him.
If they didn’t believe him, he’d be in a padded room real fast.
"Almost no information on her other than she was too horrible for Kali to put up with." Xander offered.
"I think I’m going with ‘Crap’ too, Jack" Daniel offered giving just the slightest puzzled look at Xander. "Kali is known as an earth mother goddess."
"Like Hathor?" Jack wanted to know.
Daniel winced. "Among others. She’s also known as the goddess of dissolution and destruction and often depicted with a necklace of severed heads."
"Sweet." Jack muttered sarcastically with a grimace.
While Daniel went into lecture mode, with additions from Teal’c on his knowledge of the Goa’uld Kali, Xander silently freaked out.
Glorificus.
Glory.
Different Glory…please, please a different Glory. One not quite so all-powerful and hard to kill would be very much of the good. Dawn didn’t know she was the Key here. Dawn and Andrew didn’t remember anything about Hellmouths and demons. Now what did he do? Did he try to at least tell them? If anything happened to him, someone had to know about the Key, take care of the Key. That would fall to the less than capable hands of Andrew.
~*~
Jack spaced out Daniel’s lecture, his attention instead caught by Xander. Face stoically blank but the dark eyes wildly panicked. What was going through the kid’s head to put such a manic look in his eyes?
A groan from Sam promptly cut off Daniel’s lecture and Jack’s internal musing.
"Sam?" Xander and Daniel both asked worriedly blending with Jack’s "Carter?" and Teal’c’s "MajorCarter, are you awake?"
Jack bellowed. "DOC!!! CARTER’S WAKING UP!!!"
"You know, Jack, there’s this newfangled invention called a call-light." Xander snarked and wriggled his finger in his ear to emphasize just how close to his ear Jack had bellowed.
Jack rolled his eyes.
~*~
Janet Fraiser glared. "You can’t stay by yourself."
"She can go to Xander’s he’s got extra room. Teal’c can help Xan keep an eye on her. Danny and I can go visit during the day since he doesn’t need tied to a bed like Carter does."
Xander looked at Jack. "I don’t think that came out exactly right, now did it?"
Sam sniggered and winced. "Sir, I’d rather not hear about your…uhm, kinks."
"I believe the phrase is TMI, O’Neill" Teal’c deadpanned.
Jack blushed and glared at his team. "Shut up, Daniel."
"I didn’t say anything." Daniel protested.
"No, but you’re thinking with that up to no good look on your face. I don’t want to hear it."
"Neither do I." Janet shook her head. "Sam?"
"As long as Xander keeps Jack and his rope away from me and doesn’t mind my taking over his spare room I’ll be fine."
"Xander?" Janet asked.
"No problem."
"I’ll give you a list of her meds and times for those and do NOT let her have access to her laptop for at least another three days. She needs rest. Is that understood--Xander, Teal’c?"
"Yes DoctorFraiser"
"Yep"
"My staff is going to worship me for giving you lot the boot out of here." Janet shook her head. Janet held her hand up. "I don’t want to hear it Sam. If you want out of here, you’re not having your lap top for three days and Teal’c and Xander will have strict orders of an hour of sleep for every hour of research for the next two weeks."
~*~
"You’ve managed to avoid me for the last three weeks kid." Jack slung his arm around Xander’s shoulder and steered him around the corner to his office. "We’re having a chat."
"About?"
"What you know about Glorificus."
Xander sighed.
~*~
Jack stared not sure what to believe an hour later. The kid wasn’t snaked. All the tests the Doc had run when the Giles family first arrived at the mountain and her thoroughness when they came back through the gate with staff weapon blasts hot on their heels couldn’t be doubt.
"You think I’m nuts." Xander sighed. He’d stayed as close to the truth as he could. He told Jack that he remembered being Xander Harris in another dimension, blaming it on the incident in which SG-1 met the Giles siblings. There was a chance that would be believed with all the exploding alien tech that had happened at the time.
"You’re telling the truth." Jack stared.
"Yeah. I don’t even remember what the hell happened that day. One minute we were looking at the tomb the next there were flashing lights and explosions, the next I woke up next to Faisal’s dead body, Andrew unconscious, Dawnnie bawling and an extra set of memories." Well it was the truth. All the tech exploded and he woke up with two sets of memories for lives in two different worlds. He just didn’t elaborate quite how far the differences went and that he thought the memories of Xander Harris were the originals, Xander Giles the "downloaded" ones and that he, Andrew and Dawnnie really belonged in another dimension. Judicial omission in his opinion.
"It’s happened before."
"What?" Xander gaped shocked.
"Well, not exactly. Not memories from another dimension, but we’ve had doubles from other realities show up. And the time I got the Ancients knowledge downloaded in my head." Jack allowed. He got the feeling the kid was still hiding something, but he checked out human. Checked out clean of nanobots and every known alien disease. Known being the clincher there. The kid knew how to fight. One hell of a scrapper, thought good on his feet, despite the sense the kid was still holding back something, Jack believed his story and trusted him.
"So you’re not going to call the men in white coats?"
Jack shook his head. "We’re going to the Alpha site, they found some rocks Danny needs to see. You can explain the story to Carter, Daniel and Teal’c then. I’ll have a little chat with George outside the mountain first chance I get. My gut feeling tells me to keep this quiet."
"I like your gut feeling. I really don’t wanna end up in a padded room."
"After what happened with Danny, no way I’m turning any of my team over to McKenzie. I don’t like the coincidence of it."