chapter 7

Jack kept a close watch on his team.

He thought Daniel was more upset than he was letting on. Couldn't blame the guy really. Danny had been so excited--"Uncle Ripper" and "Aunt Joyce" figured in many of his early memories. The young Giles couple had been close to the Jacksons. After Daniel's world had been torn apart with his parents deaths when he was eight, the Gileses had sought out Nicholas Ballard, somehow the old coot had managed to deny the couple access to Daniel even though he refused to have anything to do with Danny himself. Finding the three Giles kids had been like finding long lost family to Daniel.

And now, none of it real. Well, possibly not real. Aw hell, Jack shook his head. It wasn't real. Fake memories, the universe playing with Daniel's head---again.

Jack had heard every bit of Xander and Daniel's conversation three nights before. He bet Xander realized it at the time. Daniel would probably realize it if he stopped and thought about it. Xander thought like a veteran special ops officer in many respects, suspicious, wary borderline paranoid and often hyper aware. Of course some of the things the kid had said about the other world he came from. Damn. Just...damn. That the kid was alive and sane, or doing a fair imitation of sanity said a lot for him.

Jack didn't doubt the tales they'd managed to get from Xander. He had a hard time imagining what the kid said, but he didn't doubt it. The kid's instincts and reactions couldn't be faked. They were simply too ingrained. Whichever reality this kid was from, he'd been fighting for a very long time.

They hadn't decided when or how to tell Hammond anything. Daniel was the one that pointed out it might not be necessary at all. If it wasn't the same Glory, there was no need. If it was the same, or an equivilant Glory, less people that knew what she wanted was now in this dimension the better. Jack was torn. He really didn't know what to think. If Hammond knew off the record, it would eventually have to go on the record. That could bring the NID around again, which no one needed.

Teal'c seemed to have decided XanderHarrisGiles was an honnorable warrior and he needed to know nothing more than that.

Carter. Well Carter was driving the boy nuts.

"Look Sam, lets just finish up here. You can come over tonight and pick my brain for whatever you want. Okay?"

"Why don't we make a night of it, all of us?" Jack suggested.

Xander seemed to slump in defeat. "I've pretty much told you all the important facts."

"Yeah but I want to hear the monster stories" Jack grinned.

"Fine."

~*~

Monster stories. Well, he'd asked for them. Christ. Jack was amazed that the kid was sane. It was also understandable at the relative "ease" the young man had accepted the dimensional shift and his new life. Well, ease was the completely wrong word, but the kid was dealing. Dealing better than any one had a right to expect.

"What about this Glory?" Jack wanted to know.

"She feeds on brains"

"What?" Sam blinked.

"Well, not exactly. Not knife, fork, plate of fried brains, chow down anyway." Xander shrugged.

Sam sat down the slice of pizza in her hand back on the plate in front of her.

"Glory sucks peoples thoughts and leaves them mostly drooling vegetables who have the occasional screaming psychotic delusion."

"There is legend of a mind-stealer among my people." Teal'c spoke up.

Xander swallowed. "This mind stealer somehow punch her hands through a skull and feeds on the knowledge and sanity of the person."

Teal'c nodded. "The Soul-Destroyer they called this creature. A Goa'uld had taken the creature as host."

"FUCK!" Xander snarled. "Glory with a friggin snake!"

"My mentor Bra'tac knows the story better than I. I had little use for tales to frighten children at the time Bra'tac tried to tell me about this creature."

Jack stood and headed to the kitchen only to return a few moments later with a fresh beer for himself. "We've got to tell Hammond something."

Xander winced.

"No not that you're from another dimension. You said you have what this bitch is going to be looking for."

Xander swallowed and nodded. Dawnnie. "Yeah, yeah I do."

"She going to think that this thing is here?"

"If it gets out that I'm from another dimension then I'm going to be target number one because there is only one. No matter how many alternate dimensions you go through. There is only the one in existance. It has been passed through a lot of hands and a lot of dimensions its as old as time itself...but there is only one of it. Buncha monks had it before our group were given it. Monks did one hell of a screwed up number to protect it before it was sent to us."

"We fake a translation. Teal'c remembers the story about this Soul Eater. We go visit Bra'tac and see if Thor doesn't know a thing or two about Glory." Daniel spoke up.

Jack raised an eyebrow

"Between Xander and I we can come up with a language that if we say this is what we think it says no one's going to argue. There are at least five languages that we're the only two that are able to read to any extent at the SGC."

"Alien language would be better. I know a few demonic languages. Teal'c can pretend to pick one or two symbols out and voila. Those symbols say The Destroyer of Minds and Souls or something to that effect."

"Demons have written languages?" Daniel was distracted by that.

"Some of the smarter ones." Xander shrugged. "Or at least the sneakier ones. Most of them are just interested in violence and bloodshed, ending the world, hell on earth or even just munching on the locals and starting bar fights. But yeah, there are written demon languages."

"Sir, are you really suggesting that we....well..." Sam struggled for the word.

"Throw out a red herring?" Jack offered.

"Its a bit more than that, sir. Falsifying documents. Outright lying to--"

"Glory came within five minutes of ending my world. It was that close. The dimensional tears were already starting. We stopped her. But the balances were all screwed. Demons got more and more of a hold in our world. For ages there was only one active hellmouth at a time. Because of what happened stopping Glory, and what came after trying to reset the balance things got way out of kilter. By the time we were sent here by Giles...stopping a demonic Apocalypse was not an annual thing it was a monthly thing. There wasn't one hellmouth--there were eight. And two more spots that the coven in Devon were afraid were turning into baby Hellmouths. They're losing the fight there cause even if we stopped Glory there, we didnt' stop her in time. That's what it goes back to."

"You're serious, aren't you?" Sam swallowed.

Xander glared at her. "Giles gave his life, and possibly his soul, though I really hope not his soul, to get us out of that dimension. To protect us...what that bitch Glory wanted was only an afterthought, but it is the only reason I can think of why I remember and Andrew and Dawnnie don't."

As he had said the words he became more and more convinced that's what it went back too. If not for Glory and the utter screw up of the Monks that sent them Dawn as Dawn...he didn't not want Dawn, he loved Dawnnie, but that wasn't one of the brighter moves in the history of the Key.

If the Key had been the one to die...or more likely being turned back into a glowy green blob of energy then Buffy wouldn't have died for the second time. Wouldn't have been resurrected with the botched spell that gave the First its opening to make a play for ending the world. Which wouldn't have led to the activation of the potentials and the massive backlash when the first was defeated and the Sunnydale Hellmouth closed.

They hadn't had a break after that. The newly emerged hellmouths, the increased demonic activity and apocalypses, it all went back to the battle with Glory in Xander's estimation.

Sam shivered under the intense look directed at her by Xander.

"You got any better suggestions, Carter? Ones that won't put big shiny targets on Xander, or his brother and sister, cause I'm just not thinking those two kids are going to be able to take care of themselves all that well. So lets put up redflags for the NID, for any plants the Goa'uld have in the Tok'ra." Jack shook his head as Sam opened her mouth to protest. "Oh, fer cryin out loud Carter. It has happened before and will happen again. You want to risk Giles and the two kids with just Anise knowing what's what let along a Goa'uld plant among them?"

Sam nodded. "For the record I object."

"For the record, noted."

Sam sighed. "I don't see any other way though sir..."

"We bring in Hammond the first second we absolutely have to. " Jack assured her. "Which will be the first second we have something solid to go on. How many times has Daniel unofficially done research on something even if it seemed like a long shot or he was told not to? How many times have you gone fiddling with tech or running an experiment on a hunch without going through the proper channels until after the fact?" Jack raised an eyebrow.

Sam nodded slowly. "I still don't like this."

"Well for the record, I don't either, but this is the best I can come up with. If we explore this and come up with bupkiss. Great. We don't say anything. And the NID, Tok'ra and everyone else are trying to disect Xander, Andrew and Dawn. If we come up with something. Well we go from there. But until we have something why endanger a couple innocent kids who don't even know they got shoved into the wrong universe?"